Chapters 1-4 Flashcards
Human behaviour is difficult to predict because most actions are ______
Multiply determinded
The belief that we see the world as it “really is” is also known as ___________
Naive Realism
Belief perseverance is _______________
The tendency to stick to our initial beliefs even when evidence contradicts them.
The perception of a relationship where none exists is known as an _____________
Illusory Correlation
Conformation bias is ______________
The tendency for people to search for information that confirms their perception
An excuse to protect a theory or claim from falsifiability is known as an ___________
Ad hoc Immunizing Hypothesis
What is patternicity
Perceiving meaningful images in meaningless visual stimuli
What does reciprocal determinism mean?
people can often be influenced by each other
What is pseudoscience?
Claims that seem scientific but are not
What are the six principles of critical thinking?
- Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence
- Falsifiability
- Occam’s Razor- If two explanations account equally well for an observation, we should generally select the simpler one.
- Replicability
- Ruling out rival hypotheses
- Correlation is not causation
What are the seven sins of pseudoscience?
- Ad hoc immunizing hypothesis
- Lack of self-correction E.g., Facilitated communication?
- Exaggerated claims
- Anecdotes
- Evasion of peer review
6.No connectivity - Psychobabble - Language that sounds highly scientific?
In the homeopathy video, why did Benveniste’s team find positive homeopathic findings under initial testing?
Benveniste’s team found positive results under initial testing because it was not a blind test. During initial testing, Benveniste’s team knew which samples should be positively charged and which were just water.
The homeopathy video indicated that the experimenters knew which tubes contained the homeopathic water and which contained ordinary water. What is the issue here?
The issue with this is that the experimenters may be experimenting with confirmation bias
In the homeopathy video, when the study was replicated by Randi’s crew using codes so nobody knew which tubes were which- what happened?
The homeopathic testing result came back negative.
Why do so many people then find homeopathic testing useful as a treatment?
So many people find homeopathic testing useful because of the placebo effect.
Homeopathy appears to work even when a placebo should not. Like when a patient does not even know that they are taking medicine. Like animals. What might be the explanation here?
The veterinarian/ experimenter has a confirmation bias. The veterinarian may be looking for the animal to act better. The other question that is raised is how do veterinarians know that the animal is better.
What is intuitive thinking?
quick and reflexive, “gut hunches”, minimal mental effort . (ex. The first impression of people, getting out of the way of a moving car)
What is analytical thinking?
slow and reflective takes mental effort (ex. reasoning through a problem)
What are heuristics?
Quick and efficient “Mental shortcuts” which can be systematically and predictably wrong
What is the availability heuristic?
judging the likelihood of things by how readily available they come to mind
What is the representative heuristic?
judging the likelihood of an event by its superficial similarity to a prototype. This may lead one to ignore other relevant information
What are base rates?
how common a behaviour or characteristic is in the general population
Observing people in a real-world setting and carefully observing their behaviours without intervening is known as
Naturalistic Observation
What is a correlation design
a research design that examines the extent to which two variables are associated
What is an example of positive correlation
As height increases so does weight
What is an example of a negative correlation
As tooth brushing increases, tooth decay decreases
What is an independent variable
What the experimenter manipulates
What is a dependant variable
what the experimenter measures to see whether the manipulation had an effect. It is usually measured by a score
What is the placebo effect?
improvement resulting from the mere expectation of improvement
What is the nocebo effect?
harm resulting from the mere expectation of harm
What is the experimenter expectancy effect
a phenomenon in which researchers hypothesize leads them to unintentionally bias a study
What is a double-blind design?
When neither researchers nor subjects know who is in the experimental or control group
What is the halo effect
The tendency of rating one positive characteristic to “spill over” to influence the ratings of other positive characteristics
What is the horn effect?
The tendency of rating one negative characteristic to “spill over” to influence the ratings of other negative characteristics
What are demand characteristics?
cues that participants pick up from a study that allows them to generate a guess regarding the researcher’s hypothesis
What are self-report measures?
questionnaires assessing a variety of characteristics
What are surveys?
A self-report measure, that measures opinions and attitudes
What is reliability
consistency or repeatability of the measurement
What is validity?
Does it measure what it is supposed to measure?
What is the mean
The average of all scores
What is the central tendency?
where the group tends to cluster
What is the median?
The middle score in the data set
What is the mode?
most frequent score in the data set
What is the range?
the difference between the highest and lowest scores; a measure of variability
What is a standard deviation?
a measure of variability that takes into account how far each data point is from the mean
What are inferential statistics?
allows us to determine how much we can generalize findings from our sample to the full population. If we find a difference between groups
What is statistical significance?
To be statistically significant, the finding would have occurred by less than 5%
What is practical significance?
real-world importance
What are neurons?
Specialized cells that carry messages throughout the CNS (Central Nervous System- brain and spinal cord)
What does the cell body do?
the cells’ life support center, cell executive
What do dendrites do?
receive info and send it toward the cell body
What does the axon do?
pass the message along to other neurons or tissue
What does the Myelin Sheath do?
fatty tissue that insulates some axons and speeds their message
What is the axon terminal?
the tip of the axon
What are Synaptic Vesticles
littles balls at the ed of the axon terminal that contain the neurotransmitter
What are neurotransmitters?
chemical messengers
What is an action potential?
a brief electrical charge that travels down the axon
What is the absolute refractory period?
The time directly following the action potential where another action potential is impossible
What is acetylcholine involved in?
Muscle movement
What is dopamine involved in?
Learning, attention, movement and reinforcement
What is norepinephrine affect?
eating habits, arousal and wakefulness
What is serotonin involved in?
Plays a role in regulating mood, sleep, impulsivity, and agression
What does GABA do?
Lowers anxiety
What do endorphins do?
relieves pain, produces feelings of pleasure and well being
What do agonist neurotransmitters do?
Similar enough to the transmitter to imitate it and its effects
What do antagonist neurotransmitters do?
inhibit transmitter action
What is the antagonist transmitter for opiates?
Naloxone
After neurotransmitters are released into the synapse they _________
Bind with recptor sites
What does the clinical method of studying the brain involve?
studying the behavioral result of brain injury or “Posthumous examination” of brain structures to identify injured areas thought responsible for behavioral conditions existing before death
What are the cerebral hemispheres?
The left and right hemispheres of the brain
What is the corpus callosum?
the physical connection between the right and left hemispheres
What is the cerebral cortex?
an outer layer of cells that cover the cerebral hemispheres; primarily responsible for higher-level processes
What do Gilal cells do?
support, nourish, and protect neurons- they produce myelin
What is the frontal lobe responsible for?
Mediate movement, problem-solving, decision-making, inhibition, language, planning
What is the parietal lobe responsible for?
mediates touch sensation, spatial ability, attention
What is the occipital lobe responsible for?
involved with vision, edge detection, shape, form
What is the temporal lobe responsible for?
involved in memory, hearing, language, complex vision (facial recognition)
What does an electroencephalogram (EEG) do?
Measures electrical activity generated by the brain. Can detect rapid changes
What does Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) do?
Applies strong and quick-changing magnetic fields to the skull to enhance or disrupt brain function in a specific region
What does Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) do?
Measures the release of energy from water in biological tissue following exposure to a magnetic field
What does Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) do?
MRI with the measure of blood oxygen changes
What does Positron Emission Tomography (PET) do?
Measures changes in the brain activity in response to stimuli, based on their consumption of glucose.
What does Computed Axial Tomography (CAT)
do?
A 3D reconstruction of multiple x-rays through the brain
What does the medulla do?
controls autonomic functions such as breathing, heartbeat, blood pressure, coughing, barfing
What does the PONS do?
plays a role in facial movement and tactile sensations of the face and sleep and dreaming
What does the reticular formation do?
regulates attention, arousal, and alertness
What does the amygdala do?
involved in fear and aggression
What does the hippocampus do?
processes memory
What does the thalamus do?
brain sensory switchboard
What does the hypothalamus do?
regulates hunger, thirst, body temperature, and sexual behaviour
What does the cerebellum do?
Processing sensory input, coordinating movement and balance, and learning motor skills
What is the central nervous system composed of?
The brain and spinal cord
What is the endocrine system?
A system of glands and hormones that controls the secretion of blood-borne chemical messengers
What are hormones?
chemicals released into the bloodstream that influences particular organs and glands
What is the pituitary gland
a master gland that, under the control of the hypothalamus, directs the other glands of the body
What are adrenal glands?
tissue located on top of the kidneys that releases adrenaline and cortisol during states of emotional arousal
What is sensation
how the senses detect visual, auditory, and other sensory stimuli and encode them as neural signals
What is transduction
the process by which the nervous system converts an external stimulus, like light or sound, into electrical signals within neurons
What are sense receptors?
a specialized cell responsible for the transduction of a specific stimulus
What is sensory adaptation
process in which activation is greatest when a stimulus is first detected
What is psychophysics
the study of how we perceive sensory stimuli based on their physical characters
What is bottom-up processing?
begins with the sensory receptors. We construct a whole stimulus from its parts
What is top-down processing?
information processing that we use to construct perceptions based on our experience and expectations
What does the McGurk effect display?
what we see can influence what we hear
What is the absolute threshold?
Is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus, 50% of the time?
What is the Just Noticeable Difference
The smallest change in the intensity of a stimulus that we can detect
What is synesthesia
a condition in which people experience cross-modal sensations, like hearing sounds when they see colours, or even tasting colours
What is selective attention
processes of selecting one sensory channel and ignoring or minimizing others
What is inattention blindness
Failure to detect stimuli that are in plain sight our attention if focused elsewhere
What is change blindness?
A form of inattentional blindness. Where our brain does not notice changes that happen right in front of our face
What is subliminal stimulation
Stimulation that occurs below our absolute threshold for conscious awareness
What does the cornea do?
Protects the eye
What does the iris do?
The iris is a muscle the dilates when excited
What do lens’s do?
Focus and accommodation
What is the retina?
The light-sensitive surface?
What do the rods respond to?
Dim light
What do the cones respond to?
colour and detail
What is interposition?
A monocular depth cue where an object partly blocks your view of another. You perceive the partially blocked object as farther away
an object partly blocks your view of another. You perceive the partially blocked object as farther away (like cards stacked on top on another)
What is liner perspective
A monocular depth cue where parallel lines known to be the same distance apart appear to grow closer together, or converge as they recede into the distance (like train tracks)
What is relative size?
A monocular depth cue where larger objects are perceived as being closer to the viewer, and smaller objects as being farther away
What is texture gradient?
A monocular depth cue where near objects appear to have sharply defined textures, while similar objects appear progressively smoother and fuzzier as they recede into the distance
What is the muller-lyer illuson?
A line of identical length appears longer when it ends in a set of arrowheads pointing inward than in a set of arrowheads pointing outward. That’s because we perceive lines as a part of a larger context
What is the Ponzo illusion?
Making use of the monocular depth cue of Linear Perspective, the Ponzo illusion leads us to perceive the object closer to the converging lines as larger
What is Akinetopsia?
(aka motion blindness) a serious disorder in which patients cant seamlessly string still images processed by their brains into the perception of ongoing motion
