Chs. 1-4 and 11 research/studies Flashcards
Frank Tong study of link between consciousness and neural responses
Showed a picture of a face superimposed on a picture of a house. When participants reported seeing a face, their brains were more active in areas associated with facial recognition. When participants reported seeing a house, areas of the brain associated with object recognition were activated. This finding suggests that different types of sensory information are processed by different brain areas.
Pathologist Bennet Omalu’s study on NFL brain injuries
Conducted an autopsy on a deceased NFL player and found evidence of severe TBI. He then examined other NFL players and found more of the same.
Simon and Levin’s change blindness study
A person asked for directions, then was briefly covered up by a passing object, and then a different person would continue asking for directions. 50% of people did not notice the change in person asking for directions.
They conducted a second study where the person asking for directions was from an easily recognizable group such as a construction worker. The results of the first study repeated them, supporting the hypothesis that the people asked for directions (college students in this second study) classified the person asking them for directions as belonging to some group, and not noticing any detail of the person beyond that.
John Bargh study on unconcsious by word influence
The non-control group was asked to create a variety of sentences using words associated with the elderly. After they had been to told that the study was concluded, the observers noticed that the non-control group was walking slower than normal and otherwise behaving along the lines of conceptions of the elderly. This supported the idea that human behavior can occur without awareness or intention.
Robert Stickgold study about how people learn/recall with sleep vs. without sleep
Study asked participants to learn a complex task. It found that participants only improved at the task if they were allowed to sleep for at least 6 hours following training.
Study of post-hypnotic moral judgement by Thalia Wheatley and Jonathan Haidt
Participants in the study were put under hypnosis and given the posthypnotic suggestion to feel very negatively about some neutral word. After finishing hypnosis, the participant (now normally conscious again) is asked to read a story or something where one character has a lot of the neutral word in his dialogue and make judgements on that character. Participants were very harsh in their judgement of these characters and usually surprised themselves with their harshness, and started trying to make up justifications for their behavior similar to how split brain patients did.
Sephen Kosslyn and colleaugese on color and hypnosis
when hypnotized participants were asked to imagine black-and-white objects as having color, they showed activity in visual cortex regions involved in color perception. Hypnotized participants asked to drain color from colored images showed diminished activity in those same brain regions.
Study on sadness and meditation
Participants were either put in a group to learn how to meditate or put in a group to learn relaxation training. They were then exposed to stuff to make them sad, and those who had been in the meditation got less sad than those in the other group
Study by Paul Rozin about addictive personalities
Showed that there wasn’t really such a thing as an “Addictive personality”
Johnathan Shedler and Jack Block study on adolescent experimentation with drugs
Found that this type of experimentation led to people being better adjusted in adulthood than those who never tried drugs.
Studies about music and thoughts
Listening to music from childhood brings back memories. Also, listening to sad music makes people sadder and the same happens with other emotions.
The Minnesota Twins Study
The general finding was that identical twins, whether they were raised together or apart, were likely to be similar.
Avshalom Caspi study on criminality and genes (The New Zealand Study)
Found that the MAO gene, when combined with abusive parents, was correlated with a ridiculously high criminality rate.
Study manipulating specific genes of mice
Found that social behavior could be greatly affected by genes.
Turning off neurons in different animals
Found that they could further manipulate behavior, including increasing anxiety and cocaine addiction.
