Final Exam Flashcards
Amygdala
The amygdala is involved in memory and emotion, especially fear and anger.
Broca’s area
A region of the brain located on the frontal lobe of the dominant hemisphere, usually with functions linked to speech production.
What is the capacity of short term memory?
Seven items (plus or minus two)
Cerebellum
Coordinates movement, balance, and posture
Constructive Nature of Memory
We piece together memories by fitting them to a meaningful plan or organization.
Context Effects
The influence of environmental factors on one’s perception of a stimulus.
Corpus Callosum
A large tract of nerve fibers running along the longitudinal fissure of the brain and connecting the cerebral hemispheres.
Correlation Coefficient
A statistical measure of the extent to which two factors vary together, and thus of how well either factor predicts the others.
Donder’s Task
A method of separating out hypothetical stages of mental processing by requiring participants to perform a set of reaction time tasks in which each successive task differs from its predecessor by the addition of a single mental stage.
Duration of Sensory Memory
Very short.
Duration of Short Term Memory
18 - 30 seconds
Echoic
The Auditory Sensory Register maintains the sounds we have heard for about 3 or 4 seconds after the stimulus. Basically, it is the memory of sounds we have heard.
Encoding
Coding by forming associations between new information and information already stored.
Encoding failure
Sometimes we “forget” because the information is never encoded into long-term memory.
Evolutionary Psychology Criticism
- Confirmation bias is possible where the research see what they expect to see. This is true because some theories are difficult to test empirically.
- We don’t really know what the behavior of early Homo sapiens was.
- The evidence often underestimates the role of cultural influences.
Explicit Memory
Information that you have to consciously work to remember.
Goals of Psychology
- Describe
- Explain
- Predict
- Control
Iconic
Maintains an image of what we have seen for a few tenths of a second after the stimulus has appeared.
Illusory Correlation
Claiming that there is a relationship between two variables when no such thing (the correlational relationship) exists.
Implicit Memory
(Non-declarative memories) Memories of which one is not conscious (they do not have to consciously work to remember certain information, it’s practically habit).
Left and Right Brain Specialization
Most people are left-hemisphere dominant for speech and right-hemisphere dominant for visual-spatial tasks. Although the hemispheres display some specialized abilities, many functions are symmetrical and performed the same way in both hemispheres.
Left Hemisphere
Controls the right side of the body. Logic, language, science, math. reasoning, analytic thought.
Medulla
A lower part of the brain that plays a major role in cardio-respiratory mechanisms, such as breathing and heartrate.
Mood Congruent memory
Happy people will better remember happy materials than sad ones and sad people better remember sad materials than happy ones.
Neurotransmitter
a chemical substance that is released at the end of a nerve fiber by the arrival of a nerve impulse and by diffusing across the synapse causes the transfer of the impulse to another nerve fiber, muscle fiber, or other structure. Neurotransmitters allow nerve impulses to travel across synaptic gaps
Operational Definition
defining the variable as it exists in the present study
Retrieval failure
When information is in long memory but it can’t be accessed (forgetting)
Right Hemisphere
controls left side of the body. greater role in emotion, perceptual, literal, concrete, wholistic, and synthetic thinking and the processes or visual imagery
Schema
describes a pattern of thought or behavior that organizes categories of information and the relationships among them…a set of types, each associated with a set of properties
Sperry’s split brain research
Sperry severed the corpus callosum in cats and monkeys to study the function of each side of the brain. He found that when the hemispheres are not connected they functioned independently of one another which he called a split-brain. The split-brain enabled animals to memorize double the information
State dependent Memory
refers to improved recall of specific episodes or information when cues relating to emotional and physical state are the same during encoding and retrieval: Example: a person may be alert, tired, happy, sad, drunk, or sober when the information was encoded.
Synaptic gap
a microscopic gap between the neurons that deal with memory and is a facilitator of memory
Thalamus
small structure within the brain located just above the brain stem between the cerebral cortex and the midbrain. The primary function of the thalamus is to relay motor and sensory signals to the cerebral cortex
Wernicke’s Area
region of the brain that contains motor neurons involved in the comprehension of speech. Left hemisphere. posterior third, upper temporal
