2480 - Dec 11 - key concepts (1)

Question 1

Inattentional blindness

Answer 1

is the failure to notice an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight, even though the person is looking directly at it. This occurs because attention is focused on something else

Question 2

Dichotic listening tasks

Answer 2

are experiments in which participants are presented with different auditory stimuli to each ear. They are asked to attend to one ear and ignore the other. These tasks are used to study selective attention

Question 3

Unilateral neglect syndrome

Answer 3

is a neurological disorder in which a person ignores one side of their visual field. This is often due to damage to the parietal lobe

Question 4

Attention

Answer 4

is the ability to focus on a particular stimulus or task while ignoring others

Question 5

Holistic recognition

Answer 5

is a type of object recognition in which the brain processes the entire object as a whole, rather than breaking it down into its individual parts

Question 6

Prosopagnosia

Answer 6

is a neurological disorder in which a person has difficulty recognizing faces. This is often due to damage to the fusiform face area (FFA), a region in the brain that is specialized for processing faces

Question 7

Associative agnosia

Answer 7

is a neurological disorder in which a person can perceive objects, but they cannot recognize them. This is often due to damage to the areas of the brain responsible for associating visual information with meaning

Question 8

Recognition by components (RBC)

Answer 8

is a theory of object recognition that proposes that the brain recognizes objects by breaking them down into their basic 3D shapes, called geons

Question 9

McClelland and Rumelhart model

Answer 9

is a model of word recognition that is similar to feature nets, but it also includes inhibitory connections. This means that the activation of one detector can inhibit the activation of other detectors. This helps to explain how the brain resolves ambiguous stimuli

Question 10

Well-formedness

Answer 10

refers to the extent to which a letter string conforms to the rules of English orthography (spelling). People are better at recognizing well-formed letter strings, even if they are not real words, than ill-formed letter strings

Question 11

Word superiority effect (WSE)

Answer 11

refers to the phenomenon that people are better at recognizing letters when they are presented within words than when they are presented in isolation. This suggests that the context of a word provides top-down information that facilitates letter recognition

Question 12

Feature nets

Answer 12

are theoretical models of object recognition that propose that the brain recognizes objects by detecting and processing their individual features

Question 13

Object recognition

Answer 13

is the process of identifying and categorizing objects in the environment

Question 14

Akinetopsia

Answer 14

is a rare neurological disorder that impairs the ability to perceive motion. Individuals with akinetopsia see the world as a series of still images

Question 15

Visual coding

Answer 15

is the process by which the brain transforms visual information into neural signals

Question 16

Visual system

Answer 16

is the part of the nervous system responsible for processing visual information. It includes the eyes, optic nerves, and visual cortex in the brain

Question 17

Fregoli delusion

Answer 17

is a rare disorder in which a person believes that different people are actually the same person in disguise. The specific cause of Fregoli delusion is unknown, but it is thought to be related to damage to the brain, particularly in the frontal and parietal lobes

Question 18

Capgras syndrome

Answer 18

is a rare disorder in which a person believes that a loved one has been replaced by an imposter. This may be due to a disconnection between the areas of the brain responsible for facial recognition and emotional processing

Question 19

Neuropsychology

Answer 19

is the study of the relationship between brain function and behavior. It often involves studying individuals with brain damage or neurological disorders

Question 20

Neuroimaging

Answer 20

refers to techniques used to study the structure and function of the brain. Examples include fMRI and PET scans.

Question 21

Split-brain patients

Answer 21

are individuals who have had their corpus callosum (the band of nerve fibers connecting the two hemispheres) severed. This procedure is sometimes performed to treat severe epilepsy

Question 22

Lateralization

Answer 22

is the specialization of the two hemispheres of the brain for different functions

Question 23

Neurotransmitters

Answer 23

are chemical messengers that transmit signals across the synapse.

Question 24

synapse

Answer 24

is the junction between two neurons, where communication occurs

Question 25

Neurons

Answer 25

are specialized cells that transmit information throughout the nervous system

Question 26

The nervous system

Answer 26

is the body's control center. It is made up of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves. It is responsible for receiving, processing, and transmitting information throughout the body

Question 27

Cognitive revolution

Answer 27

refers to the shift in psychology from behaviorism to cognitive psychology, which occurred in the mid-20th century. It marked a renewed interest in studying mental processes, which behaviorists had largely ignored

Question 28

Transcendental method

Answer 28

is a method of reasoning backwards from observations to determine the cause. It involves making inferences to the best explanation based on the available evidence

Question 29

Cognitive psychology

Answer 29

is the scientific study of knowledge and mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem-solving, creativity, and reasoning