Definitions Flashcards
Aphasia
Language disorder, as. result of a stroke or brain injury, that affects a persons ability to communicate
fMRI
A safe and non invasive technique that detects changes in blood flow which correlates with neuronal activity
TMS
A non-invasive technique that disrupts specific brain activity for a fraction of a second
Action Potential
the change in the voltage inside a cell (relative to outside the cell) taking place at one section of the neuron at a time
Agonists
Drugs that occupy receptors and activate them
Antagonists
Drugs that occupy receptors but block receptor activation
Place cells
When our brain enters a space, it assigns certain positions to different cells and therefore these neurons respond at different spaces
Grid cells
Our brain assigns certain cells to certain positions in a grid like structure of spatially even triangles.
Psychophysics
the relationship between the physical world and the psychological world (via the neural world)
Signal Detection Theory
Allows us to separate sensitivity from response bias
Sensitivity
How well can you distinguish between when the stimulus is present or absent. Sensitivity means you have a high hit rate AND a low false alarm rate
Weber law
Discrimination threshold increases proportionally to baseline/reference stimulus increases - must be 8%
Trichromatic Theory
Colour perception is mediated by cones. There are 3 cone types: S-cones are most sensitive at short wavelengths (blue), M-cones at medium wavelengths (green) and L-cones at long wavelengths (red). Your brain perceives colour based on the combination of photoreceptors that are activated at a specific location.
Dark Adaptation
The transition of the retina from the light adapted to dark adapted state
Colour Opponency
Colour perception involves opponent processing of two pathways: Red/green and yellow/blue. When you stare deeply at something that is blue/yellow - all the blue/yellow cells are saturated, they adapt to the stimulus and stop responding. When you move your eyes to something that is right, the blue/yellow cells are tired so the red/green cell system dominates your field of vision.
Perceptual Constancy
Objects maintain their properties even when the context changes their physical characteristics
uncrossed disparity
object that are further away from the fixation point will fall on corresponding points in the retinas of the two eyes - making them single and in depth
retinal disparity
The difference in the images seen by the two eyes due to their slightly different positions. This difference helps the brain to perceive depth and distance.
crossed disparity
Objects closer to the fixation point will fall on non-corresponding points in the retinas of the two eyes. For examples, if you hold your finger close to your face and look at it with both eyes, you’ll notice that your finger appears to be double. This is because the image of your finger falls on different points in your left and right eyes.
Vergence
When we look at things that are very close, our eyes stop moving in parallel and move inward. The brain can interpret eye muscle movement to decide how much vergance and guess how far away things are
Texture gradient
things that are closeup (high resolution, good detail) things that are further away (low resolution, less detail)
Linear perspective
parallel lines come closer together off into the distance
Ariel perspective
There are water molecules in the air, and with things that are further away wehave to look through more water molecules, makes them hazy and slightly grey/blue
Interposition/occlusion
things closer to me will block things further away from me
Bottom up processing
Data driven processing that uses incoming information to drive perception
Top down processing
conceptually driven processing whereby experience and knowledge drive perception
Change blindness
A psychological phenomenon where people fail to notice changes in their environment when their attention is focused elsewhere.
Feature integration theory
Searching for one feature (colour, shape) can be done automatically. It “pops out”. It takes the same amount of time, no many how many items you have to search.
Searching for a combination of features requires controlled attention. You need to apply attention to each item, one at a time. More items requires more time.
Selective attention
The ability to prioritise some information while ignoring other information
Broadbent’s Filter Theory
Attention narrows the flow of information into awareness - only what we attend to will get meaning analysis
Treisman’s Attenuation Model
Attended messages pass through clearly. Unattended messages are weakened. Sometimes they break through
Deutsch & Deutsch late selection model:
We process everything for meaning, but only selected information makes it into our awareness.
The Biased Competition Model of Attention
attention is a competition between bottom-up and top-down factors, with the most salient or relevant stimuli being selected for further processing.
The Switch Cost
the cognitive effort required to shift attention between different tasks or stimuli. It can lead to reduced performance and increased errors when multitasking.
Cue dependency principle
The strength of a memory depends on the number and informativeness of its cues
Encoding specificity principle
Cues are most effected if they are encoded along with the to-be-remembered information.
SAVINGS
the reduction in time required to learn a second time
Retroactive interference
Recent memories interfere with the ability to retrieve older memories
Proactive interference
Old memories interfere with the ability to retrieve newer memories
Anterograde Amnesia
Amnesia for events that happen after the trauma
Retrograde Amnesia
Amnesia for any events that happened prior to the trauma
VOT
time interval between release of consonant and onset of voicing
Cooing
Tryin to produce sounds through exploration of vocal cords
Reduplicated babbling
Repeating same syllable over and over to train articulators
Variegated babbling
Syllables with different consonants and vowels
The vocabulary burst
Major increase in productive vocabulary acquisition rate after first 50 words are learned
Language Acquisition Device (LAD
Brain mechanism devoted to language that unfolds through through the process of maturation.
Child-centred talk
Caregivers adapt talk to child’s level and centre the child
Situation-centred talk
Child learns to adapt to situation and through this, learns status and heirachy
Heuristics
rules of thumb about the world
Schemas
mental knowledge structures based on experience
Scripts
common action routines
Salience bias
Assessing something as more prevalent if it comes to mind readily
Confirmation bias
seeking information the will confirm our preconceptions and ignoring information that will challenge it
The representativeness heuristic
- The tendency to classify something by how closely it matches our ‘prototype’ for that group
The Availability Heuristic
The tendency to assess outcomes as more probable if they come to mind readily
Fast Thinking process
Draws on concepts, routines, and rules of thumb acquired through extensive practice
Slow thinking process
Effortful and needed in unfamiliar situations, or for creativity & precision
thinking
The conscious experience of generating mental representations and operating on them in some way
Hot Cognition
The mental processes involved in making judgements and decisions in situations involving strong emotion
Damasio’s Somatic Marker Hypothesis
emotions play a crucial role in decision-making by guiding our choices based on past experiences and their associated emotional consequences.
learning
An experiential process resulting in a relatively permanent behavioural change that cannot be explained by temporary states, maturation, or innate tendency’s.
Classical Conditioning
A learning process in which a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a reflex eliciting stimulus such that it can elicit a conditioned response when presented alone
Generalisation
allows learning to carry over to new situations/stimuli without requiring further learning
Discrimination
restricts new learning from being inappropriately applied to ALL situations.
Operant conditiong
Learning based on the tendency to repeat behaviours that lead to desirable outcomes and we tend to stop performing behaviours that lead to undesirable outcome
Thorndike’s Law of Effect
if a response in the presence of a stimulus leads to satisfying effects, the association between that stimulus and response is strengthened
EXTINCTION
non delivery of reinforcers maintaining undesirable behaviour
Insight
sudden appearance of an appropriate behaviour without any obvious shaping
instinctive drift
instinctive behaviours interfering with conditioned responses
- James-Lange Theory
Emotions are the result of physiological changes in the body, which are then interpreted by the brain as emotions.
Schachter-Singer Theory
Emotions are a combination of physiological arousal and cognitive appraisal of the situation
Cannon-Bard Theory
stimulating events trigger feelings and physical reactions that occur at the same time
Magda Arnold’s Appraisal Theory
emotions are triggered by our cognitive evaluation of a situation, and these appraisals influence our emotional responses
The “thinking highroad”
Information goes to prefrontal cortex BEFORE amygdala
The “speedy low road”
The information goes directly from the thalamus to the amygdala, where it can stimulate fear response
Flashbulb Memories
Highly emotionally charged events have extremely vivid details
Mood congruent memory
When we are sad, sad memories are more accessible than happy memories
Traumatic memory:
Traumatic events are likely to be vividly remembered and difficult to forget. Persistent intrusive memory can contribute to post-traumatic stress disorder
Dissociation
Fragmentation of functions that are usually integrated (consciousness, memory, identity, body awareness and perception of the self and the environment)
Assimilation
Process by which new experiences are labelled/recognised/understood by applying an existing scheme
Accommodation
process by which an existing scheme is modified because a new experience does not fit into the current scheme
Sensorimotor (0-2 years)
Infants awareness only expressed through their sensory and motor abilities
Preoperational (2-6 years)
Use symbols to represent objects but do not yet reason logically
Concrete Operational Stage (7-12 years)
Can think logically about real objects and situations
Formal operational stage (12 years and >)
Can think and reason abstractly in hypothetical terms
discontinuous
New ways of understanding appears at different stages of life
Continuous
Fundamental skills already present early in life and development involves gradual changes throughout the lifespan
Preferential Looking Technique
Show two patterns simultaneously side-by-side. If infants consistently look longer at one pattern over another, it means that the infant visually prefers that pattern.
Emergence
If children express an incorrect response, then we can conclude that the knowledge has yet to emerge
Expression
Expression itself is challenging, the knowledge may have emerged but they are struggling to express it
Theory of Mind
other people have a mind, and things that have minds will behave differently to things without a mind.
