Final Exam Flashcards

Question

What is the Modern View of the Cognitive Unconscious?

Answer 1

- the current study of the unconscious mind views it as a rapid, automatic information processor that influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. - The **cognitive unconscious** includes *all the mental processes that give rise to a person’s thoughts, choices, emotions, and behaviour even though they are not experienced by the person.*

Answer 2

Our Brains are Wired for Both Fast and Slow Thinking - Modern views of cognition propose that we have 2 different types of minds wired into out one little brain. - - **Dual process theories** *suggest that we have two different systems in our brains for processing information: one dedicated to fast, automatic, and unconscious processing; and the other dedicated to slow, effortful, and conscious processing.* - The 1st, which is now commonly referred to as System 1 (Stanovich and West, 2000) is at work when you effortlessly engage in activities such as readings these words; solving problems such as 2+2 = ____; and waling down the street avoiding people, cars and other obstacles. - You use the 2nd, System 2, when you rationally and intentionally work to complete a task, such as answering this chapter’s quiz questions, solving problems such as 245 x 32 = ____, and placing an order at a restaurant. - Kahneman (2011) suggests that Systems 1 and 2 are both continuously active whenever we are awake: System 1 helps you efficiently navigate your daily life, and System 2 becomes engaged when more serious mental effort is involved. - eg. if you are walking around campus from one class to another — a walk you’ve taken dozens of times — System 1 will guide you. - However, if you happen upon a clown holding a fist full of rubber chickens, System 2 may come online to help you resolve this apparent conflict between what System 1 expected and what is observed. In this way system 2 uses information and inputs from System 1 to help guide your future behaviour. - Dual process theories similar to Freud’s idea of the split between the unconscious and conscious mind. However, dual process theories do not incorporate all of Freud’s beliefs about hidden urges, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips, and the like. - Instead, they simply propose that we have these two different ways of processing information that draw on different neural pathways. - Dual process theories have been used to understand the workings of different cognitive processes, such as attention, learning, and memory and they continue to guide thinking and research in many different areas of psychology.

Answer 3

- **Dual process theories** *suggest that we have two different systems in our brains for processing information: one dedicated to fast, automatic, and unconscious processing; and the other dedicated to slow, effortful, and conscious processing.* - The 1st, which is now commonly referred to as System 1 (Stanovich and West, 2000) is at work when you effortlessly engage in activities such as readings these words; solving problems such as 2+2 = ____; and waling down the street avoiding people, cars and other obstacles. - You use the 2nd, System 2, when you rationally and intentionally work to complete a task, such as answering this chapter’s quiz questions, solving problems such as 245 x 32 = ____, and placing an order at a restaurant. - Kahneman (2011) suggests that Systems 1 and 2 are both continuously active whenever we are awake: System 1 helps you efficiently navigate your daily life, and System 2 becomes engaged when more serious mental effort is involved. - eg. if you are walking around campus from one class to another — a walk you’ve taken dozens of times — System 1 will guide you. - However, if you happen upon a clown holding a fist full of rubber chickens, System 2 may come online to help you resolve this apparent conflict between what System 1 expected and what is observed. In this way system 2 uses information and inputs from System 1 to help guide your future behaviour. - Dual process theories similar to Freud’s idea of the split between the unconscious and conscious mind. However, dual process theories do not incorporate all of Freud’s beliefs about hidden urges, defense mechanisms, Freudian slips, and the like. - Instead, they simply propose that we have these two different ways of processing information that draw on different neural pathways. - Dual process theories have been used to understand the workings of different cognitive processes, such as attention, learning, and memory and they continue to guide thinking and research in many different areas of psychology.

Answer 4

- If System 1 can handle only simple tasks, should we think of it as an unintelligent system? - Freud attributed great intelligence to it - Contemporary cognitive psychologists wonder whether the unconscious is so smart after all, pointing out that some unconscious processes even seem downright “dumb”. - Eg. the unconscious processes that underlie the perception of subliminal visual stimuli do not seem able to understand the combined meaning of word pairs, although they can understand single words. - To the *conscious* mind, for example, a word pair such as *enemy* *loses* is somewhat positive — it is good to have your enemy lose. - However, subliminal presentations of this word pair make people think of negative things, as though the unconscious mind is simply adding together the unpleasantness of the single words *enemy* and *loses*. - so System 1 appears to be able to help us think fast, but in very simple terms.

Answer 5

- Dream consciousness involves a transformation of experience that is so radical it is commonly considered an **altered state of conscious**: *a form of experience that departs significantly from the normal subjective experience of the world and the mind.* - Such altered states can be accompanied by changes in thinking, disturbances in the sense of time, feelings of loss of control, changes in emotional expression, alterations in body image and sense of self, perceptual distortions, and changes in meaning or significance. - The world of sleep and dreams, the 2 topics in this section, provides 2 unique perspectives on consciousness: a view of the mind without consciousness and a view of consciousness in altered state.

Answer 6

pre-sleep consciousness is called the hypagogic state.

Answer 7

On some rare nights, you might experience a hypnic jerk, a sudden quiver or sensation of dropping, as though missing a step on a staircase.

Answer 8

- A typical night: as you begin to fall asleep, the busy, task-oriented thoughts of the waking mind are replaced by wandering thoughts and images and odd juxtapositions, some of them almost dreamlike. - This pre-sleep consciousness is called the *hypagogic* *state*. - On some rare nights, you might experience a *hypnic* *jerk*, a sudden quiver or sensation of dropping, as though missing a step on a staircase. - Eventually, your presence of mind goes away entirely. - Time and experience stop, you are unconscious, and in fact there seems to be no “you” there to have experiences. - But then come dreams, whole vistas of a vivid and surrealistic consciousness you just don’t get during the day, a set of experiences that occur with the odd prerequisite that there is nothing “out there” that you are actually experiencing. - Finally, the glimmerings of waking consciousness return again in a foggy and imprecise form as you enter post-sleep consciousness (the *hyponopompic* *state)* and then awake, often with bad hair.

Answer 9

Circadian rhythm - a naturally occurring 24-hour cycle, from the Latin circa (”about”) and dies (”day”).

Answer 10

5 - EEG recordings revealed a regular pattern of changes in electrical activity in the brain accompanying the circadian cycle. - During waking, these changes involve alternating between high-frequency activity (*beta* *eaves*) during alertness and lower-frequency activity (*alpha* *waves*) during relaxation.

Answer 11

- The largest changes in EEG occur during sleep. - These changes show a regular pattern over the course of the night that allowed sleep researchers to identify five sleep stages.

Answer 12

- Traditionally, to see if a patient is recovering awareness, physicians observe a patient’s behaviour and judge whether the patient is repeatedly able to respond to commands (like “raise your left arm”), or to the sound of their name being spoken. - If the patient has trouble controlling their body, then this test can be misleading. - Recently, brain-imaging methods have given researchers and physicians a direct window into brain activity. - Brain activity, is, after all, the wellspring of behaviour — for the left arm to be raised, there first must be a specific pattern of arm-raising activity in the brain. - We know that, out of every 100 ppl diagnosed as being in a vegetative state using traditional bedside assessment, between 10 and 40 will turn out to be conscious to some degree when assessed using these more sensitive measures, and about a third of patients diagnosed as minimally conscious may be fully conscious.

Answer 13

1. In the first stage of sleep, the EEG moves to frequency patterns even lower than alpha waves (*theta* *waves*). 2. In the second stage of sleep, these patterns are interrupted by short bursts of activity called *sleep* *spindles* and *K* *complexes*, and the sleeper becomes somewhat more difficult to awaken. 3. The deepest stages of sleep are stages 3 and 4, known as slow-wave sleep, in which the EEG patterns show activity called *delta* *waves*. 5. The fifth stage is **REM sleep** which is *a stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movements and a high-level of brain activity*, during which EEG patterns become high-frequency sawtooth waves, similar to beta waves. - This suggests that at this time, the mind is as active as it is during waking.

Answer 14

- an instrument that measures eye movements during sleep - Using an electrooculograph (EOG) — an instrument that measures eye movements during sleep — researchers found that sleepers who were awakened during REM periods reported having dreams much more often than those awakened during non-REM periods. - During REM sleep, the pulse quickens, blood pressure rises, and there are telltale signs of sexual arousal. - At the same time, measurements of muscle movements indicate that the sleeper is very still, except for a rapid side-to-side movement of the eyes. - 80% of people awakened during REM sleep report dreams. - - The discovery of REM sleep has offered many insights into dreaming, but not all dreams occur in REM periods. - Some dreams are also reported in other sleep stages, and the dreams that occur at those times are described as less wild than REM dreams and more like normal thinking.

Answer 15

- In the first hour of the night, you fall all the way from waking to the fourth and deepest stage of sleep, the staged marked by delta waves. - These slow waves indicate a general synchronization of neural firing, as though the brain is doing one thing at this time rather than many: the neuronal equivalent of “the wave” moving through the crowd at a stadium as lots of individuals move together in synchrony. - You then return to lighter sleep stages, eventually reaching REM and dreamland. - Although REM sleep is lighter than that of lower stages, it is deep enough that you may be difficult to awaken. - You then continue to cycle between REM and slow-wave sleep stages every 90 minutes or so throughout the night. - Periods of REM last longer as the night goes on, and lighter sleep stages predominate between these periods, with the deeper slow-wave stages 3 and 4 disappearing halfway through the night. - Over the course of a typical night, sleep cycles into deeper stages early on and then more shallow stages later. REM periods become longer in later cycles, and the deeper slow-wave sleep of stages 3 and 4 disappears halfway through the night.

Answer 16

- Newborns: six to eight times in 24 hours, often totaling more than 16 hours. - their napping cycle gets consolidated into “sleeping through the night” usually sometime between 9 and 18 months, but occasionally even later. - Typical 6-year-old child: 11 to 12 hours of sleep. - the progression to less sleep then continues into adulthood, when the average is about 7 to 7.5 hours per night. - With aging, people can get along with even a bit less sleep than that. Over a whole lifetime, we get about 1 hours of sleep for every 1 hours we are awake.

Answer 17

- Studies of REM sleep deprivation indicate that this part of sleep is psychologically important. - Memory problems and excessive aggression are observed in both humans and rats after only a few days of being awakened whenever REM activity starts. - The brain must value something about REM sleep bc REM deprivation causes a rebound of more REM sleep the next night. - Deprivation from slow-wave sleep (in stages 3 and 4), in turn, has more physical effects, with just a few nights of deprivation leaving people feeling tired, fatigued, and hypersensitive to muscle and bone pain.

Answer 18

- One possibility for why we need sleep is that the brain performs required maintenance while we sleep. - Scientists discovered a system in the brain called the “glymphatic system” that eliminates potentially neurotoxic waste products and distributes necessary compounds through the brain such as glucose, lipids, and amino acids. - The glymphatic system operates mainly during sleep, leading researchers to suggest that the brain may need sleep, and the decreased activity that comes with it, to allow itself the time and resources to perform this daily maintenance.

Answer 19

Most common disorders that plague sleep include insomnia, sleep apnea, and somnambulism.

Answer 20

- *difficulty in falling asleep or staying asleep.* - the most common sleep disorder. - 11% of adults meet diagnostic criteria for insomnia within the past month. - most ppl with it experience it for at leastca year, making it a persistent problem. - In some instances, it results from lifestyle choices such as working night shifts (self-induced insomnia), whereas in other cases it occurs in response to depression, anxiety, or some other condition (secondary insomnia). - In other cases, there are no obvious causal factors (primary insomnia). - Insomnia can be exacerbated by worrying about insomnia. - The desire to sleep initiates an ironic process of mental control — a heightened sensitivity to signs of sleeplessness — and this sensitivity interferes with sleep. - eg. participants in an experiment who were instructed to go to sleep quickly became hypersensitive and had more difficulty sleeping than those who were instructed to hurry. - Paradoxical solution in some cases: to give up the pursuit of sleep and find sth else to do.

Answer 21

- Long-term use of sleeping pills is not effective. - most are addictive - may need to increase the dose over time to achieve the same effect. - Although they promote sleep, they can reduce the proportion of time spent in REM and slow-wave sleep, robbing people of dreams and their deepest sleep stages. - The quality of sleep achieved with pills may not be as high as without them, and people may experience side effects such as grogginess and irritability during the day. - stopping using them can produce insomnia that is worse than before.

Answer 22

- *a disorder in which the person stops breathing for brief periods wile asleep.* - usually snores bc apnea involves an involuntary obstruction of the breathing passage. - When episodes of apnea occur for over 10 seconds at a time and recur many times during the night, they may cause many awakenings and sleep loss or insomnia. - occurs most often in middle-aged, overweight men and may go undiagnosed bc it is not easy for the sleeper to notice. - Therapies involving weight loss, drugs, sleep masks that push air into the nasal passage, or surgery may solve the problem.

Answer 23

- *occurs when a person arises and walks around while asleep*. - More common in children (5%) than adults (1.5%). - Tends to happen early in the night, usually during slow-wave sleep. - May awaken during their walk or return to bed without waking, in which case they will probably not remember the episode in the morning. - Their eyes are usually open in a glassy stare. - Not usually linked to any additional problems → sometimes engage in strange or unwise behaviours such as urinating in places other than the toilet and leaving the house while still sleeping.

Answer 24

- *a disorder in which sudden sleep attacks occur in the middle of waking activities.* - involves the intrusion of sleep (with REM) into wakefulness and is often accompanied by unrelenting excessive sleepiness and uncontrollable sleep attacks lasting from 30 seconds to 20 minutes. - genetic basis (runs in families) - can be treated effectively with medication.

Answer 25

- *the experience of waking up unable to move and is sometimes associated with narcolepsy*. - usually happens as you are awakening from REM sleep but before you have regained motor control. - Typically lasts only a few seconds or minutes and can be accompanied by hypnopompic (when awakening) or hypagogic (when falling asleep) hallucinations in which dream content may appear to occur in the waking world. - A series of studies suggests that sleep paralysis accompanied by hypopompic hallucinations of figures being in one’s bedroom seems to explain many perceived instances of alien abductions and recovered memories of sexual abuse (aided by therapists who used hypnosis to help the sleepers — incorrectly — piece it all together)

Answer 26

- *are abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional abuse*. - These terrors are experienced by up to 6.5% of children, and occur less frequently among adults. - Sleep terrors happen most often in non-REM sleep early in the sleep cycle and do not usually have dream content the sleeper can report.

Answer 27

1. We intensely feel *emotion*, whether it is bliss or terror or love. 2. Dream *thought* is illogical. The continuities of time, place, and person don’t apply. You may find you are in one place and then another without any travel in between. 3. *Sensation* is fully formed and meaningful; visual sensation is predominant, and you may also deeply experience sound, touch, and movement (although pain is uncommon) 4. Dreaming occurs with *uncritical* *acceptance*, as though the images and events are perfectly normal rather than bizarre. 5. We have *difficulty* *remembering* the dream after it is over. People often remember dreams only if they are awakened during the dream and, even then, may lose recall for the dream within just a few minutes of waking.

Answer 28

- We often dream about mundane topics that reflect prior waking experiences or “day residue”. - Conscious concerns experienced during the day can continue into our dream, along with images from the recent past. - The day residue does not usually include episodic memories, that is, complete daytime events replayed in the mind. - Instead, dreams that reflect the day’s experience tend to single out sensory experiences or objects from waking life. - Dreams often consist of “interleaved fragments of experience” from different times and places that our mind weaves together into a single story. - eg. after a fun day at the beach, your dream that night might include cameo appearances by bouncing beach balls or a flock of seagulls. - One study had research participants play the computer game Tetris and found that participants often reported dreaming about the Tetris geometrical figures falling down — even though they seldom reported dreams about being in the experiment of playing the game. - Even severely amnesic individuals who couldn’t recall playing the game at all reported Tetris-like images appearing in their dreams. - The content of dreams takes snapshots from the day rather than retelling the stories of what you have done or seen. -> no clear plots.

Answer 29

- children have more nightmares than adults, and people who have experienced traumatic events are inclined to have nightmares that relive those events. - eg. following the 1989 earthquake in San Francisco Bay area, university students who had experienced the quake reported more nightmares than those who had not and often reported that the dreams were about the quake.

Answer 30

- Dreams hold meaning. - In the first psychological theory of dreams, Freud (1900/1965) proposes that dreams are confusing and obscure bc the dynamic unconscious creates them precisely *to* *be* confusing and obscure. - According to Freud, dreams represent wishes, and some of these wishes are so unacceptable, taboo, and anxiety-inducing that the mind can express them only in disguised form. - Freud believed that many of the most unacceptable wishes are sexual. - For instance, he would interpret a dream of a train going into a tunnel as symbolic of sexual intercourse. - According to Freud, the **manifest content** of a dream, or *its apparent topic or superficial meaning*, is a smoke screen for its **latent content**, *a dream’s true underlying meaning.* - The problem with Freud’s approach is that any dream has infinite potential interpretations. Finding the “correct” one is a matter of guesswork — and of convincing the dreamer that one interpretation is superior to the others.

Answer 31

- According to Freud, the **manifest content** of a dream, or *its apparent topic or superficial meaning*, is a smoke screen for its **latent content**, *a dream’s true underlying meaning.* - The problem with Freud’s approach is that any dream has infinite potential interpretations. Finding the “correct” one is a matter of guesswork — and of convincing the dreamer that one interpretation is superior to the others.

Answer 32

- Elaborately hidden wishes, no. - there is evidence that they do feature the return of suppressed thoughts. - Researchers asked volunteers to think of a personal acquaintance and then to spend 5 minutes before going to bed writing down whatever came to mind. - Some participants were asked to suppress thoughts of this person as they wrote, others were asked to focus on thoughts of the person, and still others were asked to just write freely about anything. - The next morning, participants wrote dream reports. - All participants mentioned dreaming more about the person they had named than about other people. But they most often dreamed of the person they named if they were in the group that had been assigned of the person they named if they were in the group that had been assigned to suppress thoughts of the person the night before. - This finding suggests that dreams may indeed harbour unwanted thoughts.

Answer 33

- *the theory that dreams are produced when the brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity that occurs during sleep*. - During waking consciousness, the mind is devoted to making sense of the wide range of information that arrives through the senses. - In the dream state, the mind doesn’t have access to external sensations, but it keeps on doing what it usually does: interpreting information. - Because that information now comes from neural activations that occur in the now-closed system of the brain, without the continuity provided by the perception of reality, the brain’s interpretive mechanisms can run free. - This might be why, eg, a person in a dream can sometimes change into someone else. - No actual person is being perceived to help the mind keep a stable view. - In the mind’s effort to perceive and give meaning to brain activation, the person you view in a dream about a grocery store might seem to be a clerk, but then change to be your favourite teacher.

Answer 34

- The Freudian and the activation-synthesis theory differ in the significance they place on the meaning of dreams. - In Freud’s theory, dreams begin with meaning, whereas in the activation-synthesis theory, dreams begin randomly — but meaning can be added as the mind lends interpretations in the process of dreaming.

Answer 35

The neurocognitive theory of dreams proposes that dreaming is enabled by the default network, which supports imagination and daydreaming while awake, and leads to the experience of “embodied simulations” in which a person experiences being in personal and interpersonal scenarios similar to the ones experienced while awake.

Answer 36

- The *threat-simulation theory of dreams* proposes that the purpose of dreams is to simulate threatening situations that a person is likely to experience and to practice escape and avoidance from those situations. - could explain why we dream about scary situations — and how to survive them.

Answer 37

- Activation of the amygdala, the visual association areas, the motor cortex, and the brainstem, and deactivation of the prefrontal cortex. - Themes of worries, fears in dreams suggest that the brain areas responsible for fear or emotion somehow work overtime in dreams, and it turns out that this is clearly visible in fMRI. - The amygdala is involved in responses to threatening or stressful events, and indeed the amygdala is quite active during REM sleep.

Answer 38

- visual events present in almost all dreams. - However, there are fewer auditory sensations, even fewer tactile sensations, and almost no smells or tastes. - This dream “picture show” doesn’t involve actual perception, just the imagination of visual events.

Answer 39

- The areas of the brain responsible for visual perception are *NOT* activated during dreaming, whereas the visual association areas in the occipital lobe that are responsible for visual imagery *do* show activation. - During REM sleep, the prefrontal cortex shows relatively less arousal than it usually does during waking consciousness. - As a rule, the prefrontal areas are associated with planning and executing actions, and often dreams seem to be unplanned and rambling. - Perhaps this is why dreams don’t seem to have v sensible story lines. - the exception to this is *lucid dreaming* - a state in which a person becomes aware that they are dreaming while still in a sleep and dream state. - brain activation studies show that ppl who experience lucid dreams show greater connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the association areas of the brain that typically are deactivated during sleep.

Answer 40

- During REM sleep, the motor cortex is activated, but spinal neurons running through the brainstem inhibit the expression of this motor activation. - This turns out to be a useful property of brain activation in dreaming; otherwise, you might get up and act out every dream! - The brain specifically inhibits movement during dreams, perhaps to keep us from hurting ourselves.

Answer 41

- chemicals that influence consciousness or behaviour by altering the brain’s chemical message system. - Whether these drugs are used for entertainment, for treatment , or for other reasons, they each exert their influence by increasing the activity of a neurotransmitter (the agonists) or decreasing its activity (the antagonists) - Drugs alter the functioning of neurotransmitters by preventing them from binding to sites on the postsynaptic neuron, by inhibiting their reuptake to the presynaptic neuron, or by enhancing their binding and transmission. - Different drugs can intensify or dull transmission patterns, creating changes in brain electrical activities that mimic natural operations of the brain. - eg. a drug such as valium (benzodiazepine) induces sleep but prevents dreaming and so induces a state similar to slow-wave sleep — that is, what the brain naturally develops several times each night.

Answer 42

- Often, drug-induced changes in consciousness begin as pleasant and spark an initial attraction. - Researchers have measured the attractiveness of psychoactive drugs by seeing how hard laboratory animals will work to get them. - In one study researchers allowed rats to administer cocaine to themselves intravenously by pressing a lever. - Rats given free access to cocaine increased their use over the course of the 30-day study. - They not only continued to self-administer at a high rate but also occasionally binged to the point of giving themselves convulsions. - About 90% of the rats died by the end of the study. - Studies of self-administration of drugs in laboratory animals show that animals will work to obtain not only cocaine but also alcohol, amphetamines, barbiturates, caffeine, opiates (such as morphine na dheroin), nicotine, phencyclidine (PCP), MDMA (Ecstasy) and THC.

Answer 43

- People usually do not become addicted to a psychoactive drug the first time they use it → may experiment a few times, then try again, and eventually find that their tendency to use the drug increases over time. - Resaerch suggests that drug use is initially motivated by *positive* *reinforcement* which refers to an increase in the likelihood of a behaviour following the presentation of a reward. - People often try and teh nrepeat the use of psychoactive drugs because those drugs induce a positive psychological state. - Over time, however, some drugs become less rewarding and the motivation to continue to take them is driven by *negative reinforcement,* which refers to an increase in the likelihood of a behaviour following the removal of an aversive state. - That is, people often continue to use psychoactive drugs to reduce or eliminate withdrawal symptoms that arise after the drug leaves their system.

Answer 44

1. **Drug tolerance** - *the tendency for larger drug does to be required over time to achieve the same effect.* - Physicians who prescribe morphine to control pain in their patients are faced with tolerance problems because steadily greater amounts of the drug may be needed to dampen the same pain. - With increased tolerance comes the danger of drug overdose; recreational users find they need to use more and more of a drug to produce the same high. - But then, if a new batch of heroin or cocaine is more concentrated than usual, the “normal” amount the user takes to achieve the same high can be fatal. 2. *Physical dependence* refers to the pain, convulsions, hallucinations, or other unpleasant symptoms that accompany withdrawal from drug use. - People who suffer from physical dependence may seek to continue drug use to avoid becoming physically ill. - Eg. a “caffeine headache” some people complain of when they haven’t had their daily jolt of java. 3. Psychological dependence refers to a strong desire to return to the drug even when physical withdrawal symptoms are gone. - Drugs can create an emotional need over time that continues to prey on the mind, particularly in circumstances that are reminders of the drug. - Some ex-smokers report longing wistfully for an after-dinner smoke, eg, even years after they’ve successfully quit the habit.

Answer 45

- it seems that most people do not have a genetic, neurobiological, or social predisposition to drug addiction; therefore, even if exposed to addictive drugs, they will be able to resist their short- or long-term use. - However, some people are more strongly predisposed to have difficulties resisting the urge to use drugs — difficulties that, at the extreme end of the spectrum, can take the form of a disease that appears beyond a person’s behavioural control.

Answer 46

- Approximately 80% of North Americans use caffeine in some form every day, but not all psychoactive drugs are this familiar. - Several broad categories of drugs: - depressants - stimulants - narcotics - hallucinogens - marijuana

Answer 47

- **Depressants** - *substances that reduce the activity of the central nervous system*. - most commonly used depressant is alcohol; others include barbiturates, benzodiazepines, and toxic inhalants (such as glue or gasoline). - depressants have a sedative or calming effect, tend to induce sleep in high doses, can can arrest breathing in extremely high doses. - Depressants can produce both physical and psychological dependence.

Answer 48

- Alcohol is king of depressants, with its worldwide use beginning in prehistory. - It is easily available in most cultures, and has widespread acceptance as a socially approved substance. - In 2017, approximately 78% of Canadians aged 15 and older reported drinking alcohol at least once in the past year, and 21% reported exceeding low-risk drinking guidelines. - Those guidelines stipulate no more than 1- drinks a week for women, with no more than 2 drinks a day most days; and 15 drinks a week for men, with no more than 3 drinks a day most days. - Alcohol’s initial effects, euphoria, and reduced anxiety, feel pretty positive. - As alcohol is consumed in greater quantities, however, intoxication results, bringing with it slowed reactions, slurred speech, poor judgement, and other reductions in the effectiveness of thought and action.

Answer 49

- The exact way in which alcohol influences neural mechanisms is still not understood, but, like other depressants, alcohol increases activity of the neurotransmitter GABA. - GABA normally inhibits the transmission of neural impulses; thus one effect of alcohol is as an inhibitor — a chemical that stops the firing of neurons. - Yet ppl react very differently to alcohol. - Some become loud and aggressive, others become emotional and weepy, others become sullen, and still others turn giddy — and the same person can experience each of these effects in different circumstances.

Answer 50

1. Expectancy Theory 2. Theory of Alcohol Myopia

Answer 51

1. **Expectancy theory** refers to the *idea that alcohol effects can be produced by people’s expectations of how alcohol will influence them in particular situations*. - eg. if you’ve watched friends or family drink at weddings and notice that this often produces hilarity and gregariousness, you could well experience these effects yourself should you drink alcohol on a similarly festive occasion. - seeing people get drunk and fight in bars, on the other hand, might lead to aggression after drinking. - the expectancy theory has been tested in experiments using a **balanced placebo design** - *a study design in which behaviour is observed following the presence or absence of an actual stimulus and also following the presence or absence of a placebo stimulus*. - in such a study, participants are given drinks containing alcohol or a substitute nonalcoholic liquid (adjusted for scent and colour); some ppl in each group are led to believe they drank alcohol while others are led to believe they did not. - These experiments often show that the mere *belief* that one has had alcohol can influence behaviour as strongly as the ingestion of alcohol itself.

Answer 52

- The theory of **alcohol myopia** is *a condition that results when alcohol hampers attention, leading people to respond in simple ways to complex situations*. - This theory recognizes that life is filled with complicated pushes and pulls, and our behaviour is often a balancing act. - eg. imagine you are really attracted to someone who is dating your friend. Do you make your feelings known or focus on your friendship? The myopia theory holds that when you drink alcohol your judgment is impaired. - It becomes hard to appreciate the subtlety of these different options, and the inappropriate response is to veer full tilt one way or the other. - In one study on the alcohol myopia theory, men (half of whom were drinking alcohol) watched a video showing an unfriendly woman and then were asked how acceptable it would be for a man to act in a sexually aggressive way towards a woman. - The unfriendly woman seemed to remind them that sex was out of the question, and, indeed, men who were drinking alcohol and had seen this video were no more likely to think sexual advances were acceptable than were men who were sober. - However, when the same question was asked of a group of men who had seen a video fo a *friendly* woman, those who were drinking were more inclined to recommend sexual overtures than those who were not, even when these overtures might be unwanted. - Both the expectancy and myopia theories suggest that people using alcohol will often go to extremes. - In fact, it seems that drinking is a major contributing factor to social problems that result from extreme behaviour. - Driving after drinking is a major cause of auto accidents. - Alcohol has been linked to increased aggression towards others in dozens of studies, including increased likelihood of aggression in general, as well as sexual violence and intimate partner violence.

Answer 53

- Much less popular but still widely used. - Barbiturates such as Seconal or Nembutal are prescribed as sleep aids and as anaesthetics before surgery. - Benzodiazepines such as Valium and Xanax are also called minor tranquilizers and are prescribed as antianxiety drugs. - These drugs are prescribed by physicians to treat anxiety or sleep problems, but they are dangerous when used in combination with alcohol because they can cause respiratory depression (slowed breathing). - Physical dependence is possible bc withdrawal from long-term use can produce severe symptoms (including convulsions), and psychological dependence is common as well. - Finally, toxic inhalants are perhaps the most alarming substances in this category. - These drugs are easily accessible, even to children, in the vapors of inexpensive products such as glue, hair spray, nail polish remover, or gasoline. - Sniffing of “huffing” vapors from these products can promote temporary effects that resemble drunkenness, but overdoes can be lethal, and continued use holds the potential for permanent neurological damage. - Perhaps bc these products are so easily accessible, inhalant abuse often affects children at younger ages, compared to other forms of substance abuse, and it is especially common in individuals from minority and economically and socially marginalized groups

Answer 54

- are *substances that excite the central nervous system, heightening arousal and activity levels*. - The include caffeine, amphetamines, nicotine, cocaine, modafinil, and Ecstasy, some of which sometimes have a legitimate pharmaceutical purpose. - Amphetamines (also called *speed),* eg, were originally prepared for medicinal uses and as diet drugs; however, amphetamines such as Methadrine and Dexedrine are widely abused, causing insomnia, aggression, and paranoia with long-term use. - Stimulants increase the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain, thereby inducing higher levels of activity in the brain circuits that depend on these neurotransmitters. - As a result, they increase alertness and energy in the user, often producing a euphoric sense of confidence and a kind of agitated motivation to get things done. - Stimulants produce physical and psychological dependence, and their withdrawal symptoms involve depressive effects such as fatigue and negative emotions.

Answer 55

- Cocaine (stimulant) is derived from leaves of the coca plant, which is cultivated by indigenous ppls of the Andes for millennia and chewed as a medication. - Coca-Cola did contain cocaine until 1903 and may still use coca leaves to this day (with cocaine removed) as flavouring… - Sigmund Freud tried cocaine and wrote effusively about it for a while. - Cocaine (usually snorted) and crack cocaine (smoked) produce exhilaration and euphoria and are seriously addictive, both for humans and the rats you read about earlier. - Withdrawal takes the form of an inpleasant crash; dangerous side effects of cocaine use include psychological problems (eg. insomnia, depression, aggression, and paranoia) as well as physical problems (eg. death from a heart attack or hyperthermia).

Answer 56

- Ecstasy (also known as MDMA, “X”, or “E”), an amphetamine derivative, is a stimulant, but it has additional effects somewhat like those of hallucinogens. - Ecstasy is particularly known for making users feel empathetic and close to those around them. - It is often used as a party drug to enhance the group feeling at dance clubs and raves, but it can have unpleasant side effects, such as causing jaw clenching and elevating body temperature. - Users remain highly susceptible to heat stroke and exhaustion. - emergency medical treatment is required for 0.6% of users and approximately once per every 800 pills consumed. - Mounting evidence from animal and human studies suggests that sustained use is associated with damage to serotonergic neurons and potential associated problems with mood, attention and memory, and impulse control.

Answer 57

- Tobacco use is motivated far more by the unpleasantness of quitting than by the pleasantness of using. - The positive effects people report from smoking — relaxation and improved concentration, for example — come chiefly from relief from withdrawal symptoms.

Answer 58

Opium, which comes from poppy seeds, and its derivatives heroin, morphine, methadone, and codeine (as well as prescription drugs such as Demerol and Oxycontine) are known as narcotics (or opiates), highly addictive drugs derived from opium that relieve pain. - induce a feeling of well-being and relaxation that is enjoyable, but they can also induce stupor and lethargy. - The addictive properties of narcotics are powerful, and long-term use produces both tolerance and dependence. - Because these drugs are often administered with hypodermic syringes, they also introduce the danger of diseases such as hepatitis and HIV when users share syringes. - These drugs are especially alluring because they mimic the brain’s own internal relaxation and well-being system.

Answer 59

- The brain produces endogenous opioids or endorphins, which are neuropeptides closely related to opiates. - Endorphins play a role in how the brain copes internally with pain and stress. - These substances reduce the experience of pain naturally. - When you exercise for a while and start to feel your muscles burning, for example, you may also find that a time comes when the pain eases — sometimes even *during* exercise. - Endorphines are secreted in the pituitary gland and other brain sites as a response to injury or exertion, creating a kind of natural remedy, sometimes referred to as “runner’s high” that subsequently reduces pain and increases feelings of well-being. - Research suggests that runner’s high also seems to be induced in part by activation of the brain’s enocannabinoid system — the same one involved in response to smoking marijuana. - - When people use narcotics, the brain’s endorphin receptors are artificially flooded, however, reducing receptor effectiveness and possibly also depressing the production of endorphins. - When external administration of narcotics stops, withdrawal symptoms are likely to occur. - Withdrawal symptoms can be especially difficult to cope with when using narcotics, which might partially explain the current epidemic sweeping the United States and canada.

Answer 60

- The drugs that produce the most extreme alterations of consciousness are the **hallucinogens**, *drugs that alter sensation and perception and often cause visual and auditory hallucinations*. - These include LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide or acid), mescaline, psilocybin, PCP (phencyclidine), and ketamine (an animal anaesthetic). - Some of these drugs are derived from plants (mesacline from peyote cactus, psilocybin or “shrooms” from mushrooms) and have been used by ppl since ancient times. - The other hallucinogens are largely synthetic. - LSD was first made by the chemist Albert Hofmann in 1938, leading to a rash of experimentation that influenced popular culture in the 1960s. - These drugs produce profound changes in perception. - Sensations may seem unusually intense, stationary objects may seem to move or change, patterns or colours may appear, and these perceptions may be accompanied by exaggerated emotions ranging from blissful transcendence to abject terror. - These are the “I’ve-become-the-legs-of-a-chair!” drugs. - The effects of hallucinogens are dramatic and unpredictable, creating a psychological roller-coaster ride that some people find intriguing and others find deeply disturbing. - Hallucinogens are the main class of drugs that animals won’t work to self-administer, so it is not surprising that in humans these drugs are unlikely to be addictive. - One recent randomized controlled trial showed that the administration of psilocybin was as effective as a commonly used anti-depressant at decreasing symptoms of depression over a 6-week period. - Another recent trial demonstrated the effectiveness of MDMA in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Answer 61

- **Marijuana** (or **cannabis**) is *the leaves and buds of the hemp plant, which contain a psychoactive rug called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)*. - When smoked or eaten, either as is or in concentrated form as *hashish*, this drug produces an intoxication that is mildly hallucinogenic. - Users describe the experience as euphoric, with heightened sense of sight and sound and the perception of a rush of ideas. - Marijuana affects judgment and short-term memory and impairs motor skills and coordination — making driving a car or operating heavy equipment a poor choice during its use. - Researchers have found that receptors in the brain that respond to THC are normally activated by a neurotransmitter called *anandamide* that is naturally produced in the brain. - Anandamide is involved in the regulation of mood, memory appetite, and pain perception and has been found to temporarily stimulate overeating in laboratory animals, much as a marijuana does in humans. - Some chemicals found in dark chocolate also mimic anandamide, although very weakly, perhaps accounting for the well-being some people claim they enjoy after a “dose” of chocolate. - Addiction potential of marijuana is not strong bc tolerance does not seem to develop, and physical withdrawal symptoms are minimal. - Marijuana abuse and dependence have been linked with increased risk of depression, anxiety, and other forms of psychopathology. - Many people also are concerned that marijuana (along with alcohol and tobacco) is a **gateway drug** - a *drug whose use increases the risk of the subsequent use of more harmful drugs*. - The gateway theory has gained mixed support, with research studies challenging the notion and suggesting that early-onset drug use in general, regardless of type of drug, increases the risk of later drug and mental-health problems.

Answer 62

- **Hypnosis** refers to *a social interaction in which one person (the hypnotist) makes suggestions that lead to a change in another person’s (the participant’s) subjective experience of the world*. - The essence of hypnosis is in leading people to expect that certain things will happen to them that are outside their conscious will.

Answer 63

- To induce hypnosis, a hypnotist may ask the person being hypnotized to sit quietly and focus on some item, such as a spot on the wall (or a swinging pocket watch) and may then make suggestions to the person about what effect hypnosis will have (”your eyelids are slowly closing”). - Even without hypnosis, some suggested behaviours might commonly happen just because a person is concentrating on them. - Just thinking about their eyelids slowly closing, for instance, may make many people shut their eyes briefly or at least blink. - In hypnosis, however, suggestions may be made — and followed by people in a susceptible state of mind — for very unusual behaviour that most people would not normally do, such as flapping their arms and making loud clucking sounds. - Susceptibility is not easily predicted by a person’s personality traits. - A hypnotist will typically test someone’s hypnotic susceptibility with a series of suggestions designed to put a person into a more easily influenced state of mind. - One of the best indicators of a person’s susceptibility is the person’s own judgment. - So if you think you might be hypotizable, you may as well be. - People respond most strongly to hypnotic suggestions not only when they are highly susceptible, but also when hypnotic suggestions are made very specifically and in the context of hypnotic induction rituals.

Answer 64

- Some impressive demonstrations suggest that real changes occur in those under hypnosis. - Eg. in 1849 birthday festivities for Albert, Prince Consort of the British Monarch, a hypnotized guest was asked to ignore any loud noises and then didn’t even flinch when a pistol was fired near his face. - Studies have demonstrated that hypnosis can undermine memory, but with important limitations. - People susceptible to hypnosis can be led to experience **posthypnotic amnesia** - *the failure to retrieve memories following hypnotic suggestions to forget*. - Eg. Ernest Hilgard (1986) taught a hypnotized person the populations of some remote cities and then suggested that the participant of some remote cities and then suggested that the participant forgot the study session; after the session the person was quite surprised at being able to give the census figures correctly. - Asked how he knew the answers, the individual decided he might have learned them from a TV program. - Such amnesia can then be reversed in subsequent hypnosis. - Research has found that only memories that were lost while under hypnosis can be retrieved through hypnosis.

Answer 65

- Research has found that only memories that were lost while under hypnosis can be retrieved through hypnosis. - The false claim that hypnosis helps people unearth memories they are not able to retrieve in normal consciousness seems to have surfaced bc hypnotized people often make up memories to satisfy the hypnotist’s suggestions. - eg. Paul Ingram, an American sheriff’s deputy accused of sexual abuse by his daughters in the 1980s, was asked by interrogators in session after session to relax and imagine having committed the crimes. - He emerged from these sessions having confessed to dozens of horrendous acts of “satanic ritual abuse.” - These confessions were called into question, however, when the independent investigator Richard Ofshe used the same technique to ask Ingram about a crime that Ofshe had simply made up out of thin air, something of which Ingram had never been accused. - Ingram produced a three-page handwritten confession, complete with dialogue. - Still, prosecutors in the case accepted Ingram’s guilty plea; he was released only in 2003 after a public outcry and years of work on his defense. - After a person claims to remember something, even under hypnosis, it is difficult to convince others that the memory was false.

Answer 66

- Hypnosis also can lead to measurable physical and behavioural changes in the body. - One well-established effect is **hypnotic analgesia**, *the reduction of pain through hypnosis in people who are susceptible to hypnosis.* - eg. one study found that for pain induced in volunteers in the laboratory, hyponsis was more effective than morphine, diazepam (Valium), aspirin, acupuncture, or placebos. - The pain-reducing properties of hypnosis have been demonstrated repeatedly over the years, with recent research from controlled trials suggesting that it can even reduce the experience of pain in brain surgery during which the patient is awake. - It therefore appears that people under hypnotic suggestion are not merely telling the hypnotists what they want to hear. → they seem to be experiecing what they have been asked to experience.

Answer 67

- **Consciousness**: a person’s moment to moment subjective, personal experience. - eg. now: you are aware of your surroundings, you take in the world through your senses, you know what you are thinking - what makes it difficult is that it is subjective

Answer 68

- **Qualia**: qualitative experience of your consciousness. - eg. is your experience of eating a blueberry the same as everyone else’s? - this subjectivity is called qualia

Answer 69

- **In attentional blindness** - A failure to notice something obvious changing in front of us when focused on something else. - failure to notice a fully visible but unexpected object or event when attention is engaged on something else. - eg. the gorilla in the video asking you to count how many times the people in white passed the basketball

Answer 70

- A failure to notice large changes in one’s environments - failure to notice changes in a visual stimuli when those changes occur in a visual disruption or are introduced gradually. - Researcher asking for direction - Researcher is blocked by a large object so they are out of view and a new researcher takes their place. - Does the person being asked for direction notice?

Answer 71

- **Automatic processing** - Occurs when we know a task so well that we can do it without much attention. - eg. walking. - Allows less focus on consciousness. - **Controlled processing** - Helps us with more complex or new tasks, situations. - Slower than automatic processing.

Answer 72

- Occurs when we know a task so well that we can do it without much attention. - eg. walking. - Allows less focus on consciousness.

Answer 73

- Helps us with more complex or new tasks, situations. - Slower than automatic processing.

Answer 74

(see notes) - reading the words is easy - but reading the colour that the words are is harder - One explanation for why it may be difficult to read the colours that the words actually are is bc ppl cannot turn off their automatic processing (that automatic ability to read the meaning of the word when they need to say the colour of the word) - Is also conflicting information to consider.

Answer 75

- Major changes to the environment may go unnoticed when conscious awareness is focused on elsewhere. - So attention involves being able to selectively focus on some things but not others.

Answer 76

- While not the same thing, attention and consciousness do go hand-in-hand. - Eg. you’re at a party, it’s pretty noisy there are conversations happening all around you; even with all this noise, you’re able to hear and focus and zero in on what your friend is telling you. - In this way, attention is going to select what is going to enter your consciousness. - you listen to your friend tell a story, you perceive and process it. - EC Cherry → interested in attention at parties - noted a similar idea that you could focus on a friend’s story during a nosy party, but what happens if you suddenly hear your name or some juicy gossip from somewhere else in the room? - that tends to capture your attention and now your attention is divided. - and being divided, you can only understand some of what you’re listening to. Or you can shift attention to focus on just one of the conversations - In this vein, Cherry developed some selective listening studies in order to understand what the mind does with unattended information when a person pays attention to one task. - To do this, he used a technique called shadowing. - in this procedure, a participant wears headphones to deliver one message to one ear and a different message to the other ear. - The participant is asked to listen to one message and shadow it by repeating it out loud. - Usually what happens is that the participant will notice that there is the other message, the one that they are not paying attention to, but the participant will have little information about what was said. - BUT if the information in the unattended message is something that is personal to you like your name, you are more likely to catch what is being said while you still listen to the attended message.

Answer 77

- **Endogenous Attention** - attentional control driven by internal goals and intentions, voluntary and deliberate, guided by what you decide to focus on. - If you are searching for a friend in a crowded room, you consciously direct your attention to look for specific features that help you find them. - Intentionally focusing your attention on sth → eg when you decided to read a book. - eg. if you’re attending to information on your phone or laptop will in class you can miss a lot of important details - there is research that shows that those who use social media during class time tend to do poor in class. - you don’t have to be the one off-task on your computer → research has shown that simply sitting near someone off task can lower your grade.

Answer 78

- **Exogenous Attention** - attentional control driven by external stimuli, automatic and reflexive, triggered by something happening in the environment. - If you hear a loud noise or see a bright flash of light, your attention is immediately drawn to it, even if you were focusing on something else. - pretty much shuts off your ability to attend to anything else - eg. you’re reading a suddenly you get a cramp → cramp would grab your attention.

Answer 79

- **Behavioural study** (eg. rouge test) - Objective measures - Eg. Rouge test, mirror recognition test. - in first instance of the rouge test → a researcher exposed 4 chimps to a mirror. By day 3 of the study, the chimps were using the mirror to inspect hard-to-see parts of their own bodies and making odd faces of themselves in the mirror. - to further test whether chimps knew the mirror images were their own reflections, the chimps were anesthesized and they had a red mark put on their head or face. - Later, with no mirror, the chimps rarely, if ever, touched the red mark. - But then seeing the mark in the mirror when the mirror was re-introduced they touched the spot on their fave almost 30x in 30 mins; suggesting that the chimps had some self awareness. → they understood that the spot was on them. - Eg. Elephants and Mirrors - elephants, orangutangs, gorillas, magpies, pigeons, ants are animals that are noted to have passed this test - Similar tests were done in children and found that we tend to recognize ourselves in a mirror at around 18 months - why would a dog not pass the mirror recognition test, I’ll continue with saying that a dog doesn’t really rely on vision like. a chimp would or like we would. - dogs focus on using olfaction and audition vision is third so that might be why a dog fails the test not bc they don’t have consciousness bc it’s not suited to them why would they look in a mirror? - another consideration is that maybe the animals just aren’t interested in the mirror or the mark → what good does it do for an animal to be able to recognize themselves in a mirror and also recognize themselves in something.

Answer 80

Exogenous attention → occurs when attention is unintentionally shifted to a stimulus.

Answer 81

Francis Galton - proposed that there is mental activity below the conscious level and this can influence behaviour. (priming)

Answer 82

Freud → would say that the unconsciousness is the biggest part of ourselves and the driving force of our behaviours and actions.

Answer 83

- **Priming** - Influences responses based on recent experiences with stimuli - when the responses to a stimulus is influenced or facilitated by recent experiences with that stimulus or related stimuli. - Seeing cleaning supplies primes “lemon” over other fruits - lemon is often associated with a fresh-clean scent - Occurs even if the priming stimulus isn’t consciously remembered. - eg. seeing the cleaning supplies - so priming can influence how you perceive or receive something or how easy it is for you to respond to something or the choices that you - eg. if you were asked to come up with words starting with “c-h-a” you could probably come up with a bunch of words. - but if you just read the sentence, “the family was having dinner at the table” then later when you were asked to come up with words, you’d be more likely to come up with something like the word “chair” → bc reading the word “table” primes you to think about the related term “chair” - this connection works with priming even if you don’t remember it. → this suggests that it’s implicit/unconscious - **Subliminal Perception** - Stimuli are processes by sensory systems without reaching consciousness. - bc they are so short or so subtle, they don’t reach consciousness. - Subliminal messages in commercials or song. - 1980s Self-Help Tapes - eg things like listening to audiobooks that said nice things to you to make you more confident; or tapes to help you improve your memory and the key was you were supposed to listen to these in your sleep. - a study took this idea and tried it with university students, some of the tapes were for memory and some were for confidence - the researchers intentionally mislabeled some of the tapes; so half of them were labeled memory when they were really confidence tapes. - results showed that people’s belief about which tape they had heard influenced the effects of the message they listened to: ppl who thought they were listening to the memory tape, improved on memory, even if they were actually listening to the confidence tape and vice versa. → ppl who thought they were listening to subliminal messaging about self-confidence improved on self-confidence, even if they actually heard the memory tape. - while research shows that there is little effect, there is still that effect. - eg. there was one study where participants were reported to exert greater physical effort when images of money were flashed at them → even if they reported never seeing the images - Emotional or motivation messages work best. - eg. like flashing the word “thirst” vs “by Coke” → thirst was more effective in that it led to the participants drinking more - so overall, emotional or motivational messages work better. - Through research we know that subliminal messaging has a small effect on behaviour, if it works at all.

Answer 84

- Rhythmic daily cycles. - Biological patterns that occur at regular intervals as functions of time and day. - things like body temp, hormone levels, sleep-wake cycles all follow a circadian rhythm.

Answer 85

- Sleep regulated by specific part of the hypothalamus - **Suprachiasmatic nucleus** (SCN) - Signals the **pineal gland** to release **melatonin** - **Light-Reduce** - bright light suppresses the production of melatonin - **Dark-Increase** - darkness triggers the release of melatonin - when we take melatonin → we could say that our conscious awareness turns off, but it seem like your body is still aware of things. - eg. during sleep → for the most part, you don’t tend to fall out of bed or how some people shift in their sleep to get comfortable.

Answer 86

Stage 1: Light Sleep (1-10 min) Stage 2: Deeper Sleep (10-25) min Stage 3 & 4: Deeper Sleep (after 10-30 min) Stage 5: aka REM sleep

Answer 87

- **Stage 1**: Light Sleep (1-10 min) - Alpha/beta waves from wakefulness transition to theta waves when you have fallen asleep. - Reminders: EEGs measure electrical activity in the brain. - When we are awake, we have beta waves showing: short, frequent, irregular brain signals. - When we focus or relax, we see alpha waves: brain activity slows a bit and becomes more regular. - As we drift off into sleep, we enter stage 1 and we see theta waves - short bursts of irregular waves, but overall slower waves. - Here, you are very lightly, asleep → it is easy to be awakened and you might experience a kind of jerky, falling feeling.

Answer 88

- **Stage 2:** Deeper Sleep (10-25) min - Deeper sleep - Body is slowing down, heart rate, and more - your breathing is now becoming more regular and you’re again falling deeper into sleep, less sensitive to outside stimulation. - Sleep spindles 91-2 seconds rapid brain activity) - K-complex - large waves. - abrupt noises can trigger those k-complexes. - - We still see some theta waves but we want to notice these bursts of energy called **sleep spindles**. - We observe less sleep spindles as we age, and as we age we get less sleep. - It is thought that these k-complexes and sleep spindles are the brain trying to keep people asleep → so as the way to shut out the external world.

Answer 89

- **Stage 3 & 4:** Deeper Sleep (after 10-30 min) - Appearance of delta waves - Here, we see large, regular sleep patterns called delta waves - Slow wave sleep - is very hard to wake up, and if we want to wake up, we’re very disoriented. - but we can be awoken by dangerous situations, anything that puts us in danger and anything that puts our kin in danger. - Nowadays stages 3 and 4 can be considered the same stage because they are pretty much the same, but we can also just say stages 3 and 4. - At this point, you have been sleeping for 60-90 minutes and have completed stages 1, 2, 3, 4 - Now you’re going to go back up to 3, 2, 1 and then you’re going to enter a very different sleep.

Answer 90

- **Stage 5**: aka REM sleep - Occupies 20-25% of our night’s sleep - Cycles of REM sleep last between 20min-1hr - REM sleep paralysis - Here, the EEG is going to show a flurry of beta waves that usually show up when we’re awake - And we can observe REM (rapid eye movement) - Here, we have a sleeping body and an active mind. - Some parts of the brain are even more active than they are during waking hours. - But the body is mostly paralyzed - This is where we see a lot of dreaming → more dreaming in REM sleep than non-REM sleep. - There is a misconception that we only dream when we’re in REM sleep, but that’s not the case; we can experience dreams and other mental activity during non-REM sleep. - Non-REM dreams are just shorter and less story-like; they lack vivid sensory and motoric experiences. - The differences may be due to what parts of the brain are activated during sleep. - During non-REM sleep: there is general deactivation of brain regions - During REM sleep there is increased activity in some areas and decreased activity in others. - The activation is shown in structures that are associated with motivation, emotion and reward. - Activation of the visual cortex and deactivation of the prefrontal cortex in the frontal cortex - Overall, this means that our emotion centre - the amygdala - and visual centres - interact without conscious monitoring of our frontal cortex. - REM sleep does not produce a sleep state; REM is just correlated with the contents of dreams

Answer 91

- Goes from awake (1) to 2, 3, 4, → then 3, 2, 1 REM and then you would continue with that cycle - You might repeat this cycle 5 times a night, and then after that with REM sleep you go back down into your slow wave sleep then back up to REM; then note that the cycles get shorter and shorter the longer we sleep.

Answer 92

Melatonin!

Answer 93

- Restoration theory - Repair and rest - the theory here is that sleep allows our body including our brain time to repair and rest - we can evidence this by studies that find that after ppl take part in hard physical activity, they tend to sleep longer. - we see that some hormones only are released during deep sleep. - researchers have found that the brain helps clear out toxins. - we also know the sleep deprivation has awful effects on our mood and cognition. - Circadian rhythm theory - Survival - this theory states that sleep has evolved as a way to keep animals quiet and inactive during time when danger is highest—when it’s dark. - we see this relationship with how much an animal needs to survive. → eg. small animals sleep a lot, large animals tend to sleep a little - humans sleep at night — that is when we are most at risk. - the idea is that early humans who slept at night were the ones who survived and reproduced. - Learning theory - Learning works better with sleep - Neural connections that are made during the day which support learning are strengthened during sleep. - When research participants sleep after learning, their recall is better than participants who were in a condition where they cannot sleep. - found similar results with studying for exams and sleep → not cramming → think of how much we sleep as infants → to facilitate the massive amounts of learning we do.

Answer 94

- **Freud’s Dream Protection Theory** - *The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)* - For Freud, dreams had hidden content which represented conscious conflicts within our mind. - Manifest (actual dream) vs. Latent Content (dream symbolizes) - Manifest - what the dream is about - Latent - what the dream symbolizes - is there to protect us from confronting what out dreams are really about → little evidence to support this BUT we do have evidence that experience usually daily experiences can come into our dreams → like maybe you have a dream where you show up late for sth; or you’re unprepared for sth → eg. have a dream where as your writing an exam the night before an exam that your pencil keeps turning into a hotdog - What’s also interesting is we tend to have these dreams even after we graduate. - Freud made a long list of all the sexual symbols dreams could contain - He believed that the number 3, eg, is the symbol for a penis, as are elongated objects such as umbrellas, trees, sticks and tall monuments. - Freud thought that objects that can cause harm —guns, swords, knives— could also be seen as phallic symbols. - Even animals, including reptiles like snakes can serve as stand-ins for male genitalia in Freudian dream theory - Freud: female genitalia in dream theory was represented by objects containing space to be filled: trunks, shoes, pits, caves and the mouth.

Answer 95

- **Activation-Synthesis Theory** - Dreams mean nothing… - random brain activity occurs during sleep and this neural firing can activate mechanisms that normally interpret sensory input - Our sleeping mind is trying to make sense of that activity by connecting it, synthesizing it with memories - so dreams are just a side effect of the random firings of activation that our brains are trying to synthesize. - but we still lack this self-awareness, reduce attention and poor memory compared to waking life. - Activation = random neural activity in the brain - Synthesis = cerebral cortex interprets activity - Dominating theory on dreaming - some researchers have used fMRI to monitor patients’ brain activity during sleep and successfully predicted the content of the dream by comparing this activity to visual imagery viewed while awake. - they found that specific brain regions, particularly in the higher visual cortex, corresponded with dream imagery so this study highlights the potential to decode and understand visual experiences during sleep based on brain activity.

Answer 96

- Researchers suggest that animals experiencing REM sleep likely dream. - REM sleep is crucial for processing and storing memories and is essential for learning and survival. - In humans, REM sleep also processes emotions, reducing negativity and reactivity. - May be similar in emotionally developed animals → dogs, primates, dolphins. - Rats and humans show similar brain activity during sleep. - neurons in rats rewarded with food replay the firing pattern during rest, indicating memory formation. - In 1950s, research on cats showed that without REM sleep muscle paralysis cats would act out their dreams so they would go through the motions of stalking and pouncing on prey - In terms of survival function, REM sleep helps discard unnecessary memories, store important ones and adapt to environments using past experiences.

Answer 97

Restoration Restorative Theory

Answer 98

- An out-of-body experience reported by people who have nearly died or thought they were going to die. - Most often out-of-body experiences are reported during near-death experiences. - Passing through a dark tunnel, experiencing a bright light, seeing our lives pass before our eyes, and meeting spiritual or long-dead relatives - Psychologists propose that what is going on during these near-death experiences is depersonalization: basically that we become detached from our bodies, the mind detaches from the body’s experience in a hallucinogenic-like state. - Others would say that a near-death experience is just the mind dealing with the stress of the encounter of death. - so you imagine something to soothe that process of death - A lot of times, the experience of near-death is based on the self as well - eg. if you were a religious person you might be meeting whoever your higher power is - Another explanation: near-death experience is just reliving birth → it’s a start of a new life, the dark tunnel with light at the end is just us escaping from the birth canal and being greeted with love. - full circle - There are ppl who are born C-section who still report having that classic near-death experience and tunnel.

Answer 99

- A mental procedure where we focus on some external or internal object, event, or sense of awareness to create an altered state of consciousness. - Two forms: - Concentrative: focus on one thing. - eg. your breathing, your repeating a mantra - Mindfulness: let thoughts flow freely. - they flow, you pay attention to them, but you don’t really react to them. - Different religions have different forms of meditation - In many religious forms, meditation is meant for enlightenment - Meditation in Western culture is to expand the mind, bring out feelings of inner peace, and deal with stress.

Answer 100

- Hypnosis induces a trance-like state where conscious awareness is separated from other aspects of consciousness. - Brain imaging studies show changes in brain activity, such as activation in visual cortex during hypnotic suggestions related to perception (eg. imaging colour in black and white objects). - eg. in one study researchers demonstrated that when hypnotized participants were asked to imagine black and white objects as having colour, they showed activity in the visual cortex regions of their brain areas involved in colour perception - and when asked to drain colour from the coloured images, researchers saw diminished, lessened activity in the same brain regions. - researchers also looked at brain activity when the participants were not hypnotized and they did not see this kind of change in brain activity, suggesting that the brain activity pattern followed hypnotic suggestions and that it is a little harder for our brains to lie.

Answer 101

- Hypnotized individuals behave as expected of someone in hypnosis, fulfilling roles and actions suggested by the hypnotist. - even if those expectations are faulty - Participants are not consciously faking but willingly engage in behaviours associated with hypnosis.

Answer 102

- TBI results from a blow to the head or sharp movement, often due to accidents or sports injuries - TBIs account for about 30% of injury-related deaths and are a major cause of long-term disabilities. - that can sometimes last days or even decades - with disability you can find impairment to thinking, memory, emotion and personality - The more serious, the more likely it is to be permanent - **Concussion** (previously mild TBI) - confusion, dizziness, memory issues, and temporary loss of consciousness due to head injury. - still serious - While most ppl will recover from a TBI in 1-2 weeks, an issue can be that there’s a cumulative effect with any new head injuries - So each concussion can lead to more serious symptoms and longer lasting symptoms

Answer 103

- **Coma** - a state of deep unconsciousness, often following traumatic injuries, allowing the brain to rest. - Patients show sleep/wake cycles, can open and close their eyes, but do not respond to surroundings. - ppl in a coma don’t respond to their environment/external stimuli so its hard to say when and if they have consciousness. - Studies show some coma patients have brain activity similar to awake individuals when asked to imagine activities. - eg. 2008 brain imaging study → when they asked a woman in a coma to imagine playing tennis and walking through her house, her brain activity was very similar to a control person who was asked to imagine the sake thing and was not in a coma. - the researchers noted the woman could not give/provide any outward sign of awareness but bc of these findings they beleive she was able to understand them and their requests and the application is now looking at how to communicate with those in a coma. - in 2010 the same research team found more patients who were able to control brain activity. One man was able to answer some yes or no questions by thinking of one image for yes and another for no. - seems there is consciousness in some ppl, and some ppl in a coma are aware of what is happening around them even if they can’t respond. - the hope is that these ppl can then communicate about their condition and what they need.

Answer 104

- **Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome** - a state where a person appears to have emerged from a coma (eyes are open, they have sleep-wake cycles) but does not respond to external stimuli for over a month. - not associated with consciousness - typically normal brain functioning does not occur due to large portions of the brain being damaged - usually the longer this state last, the less likely it is that the person will recover consciousness

Answer 105

- **Minimally Conscious State** - patient can make deliberate movement or try to communicate. - some ppl who emerge from a coma can make deliberate movements like following sth with their eyes, or someone will try to communicate - typically has a better prognosis than to unresponsive wakefulness syndrome - brain imaging can determine where a traumatic brain injury is, its severity and who is likely to regain consciousness.

Answer 106

- **Brain Death** - irreversible loss of all brain functions as shown by brain imaging. - brain imaging can tell us whether a person is brain dead. - unlike someone who has unresponsive wakefulness syndrome who shows activity in the brain stem, with brain death no activity is found in any region of the brain. - when the brain can no longer function, the rest of the body stops functioning unless medically supported. - brain is important for integrating activity that helps our organs like heart and lungs and keeps us alive.

Answer 107

- Stimulate, heighten activity in the body - Increase: Heart rate, blood pressure, mood, restlessness - Decrease: sleep - Amphetamines, methamphetamines, cocaine, nicotine, caffeine - Work in a couple of ways: 1. Interfere with reuptake of dopamine by the releasing neuron. - this allows dopamine to remain in the synapse and prolong its effects 2. Increase release of dopamine

Answer 108

Those in a state of unresponsive wakefulness syndrome show more abnormal brain function, while those who are brain dead show no brain function.

Answer 109

- **Memory:** the ability to store and retrieve information, like stimuli, images, ideas, skills and more. - after the original information is no longer present - HM (Henry Molaison) - while he was 80, he lived like he was 27. - when he was younger he suffered from epilepsy and it interfered with everyday life. - doctors tried surgery to remove the part of HM’s brain that caused the seizures. - removed his temporal lobe including his hippocampus → worked in that HM’s seizures stopped - but it caused him to lose the ability to remember new information for more than a few minutes. He also lost more factual information, eg. he didn’t know the days of the week, the year, his age. - but he could remember details about these kinds of things → he could still talk about his childhood and describe his family before the surgery.

Answer 110

- **Amnesia:** inability to retrieve information - can happen from a disease, brain injury, trauma

Answer 111

- **Anterograde amnesia**: loss of ability to assimilate and retain new knowledge - Memento, Finding Dory - More common in real life - HM had this anterograde amnesia: he could remember his life before the surgery, but anything after wasn’t remembered. → he could remember things very shortly but if a conversation lasted more than a few minutes, he would lose track. - it seemed he was able to still learn new things even if he wouldn’t or didn’t remember them → specifically he would remember motor tasks → eg. he would trace the outline of a star while watching his hand in a mirror and most people do this very poorly, but if you had practice, you would get better. - but HM with amnesia also got better at this task, but HM could not remember ever having completed this task, yet his performance improved. - helps us learn about the connection between memory and the hippocampus and it also helped understanding that there are different types of memory and different types of memory loss and that the brain is interconnected.

Answer 112

- **Retrograde Amnesia**: loss of memory for events that have happened in the past. - The Bourne Identity, RoboCop - events, facts, people from the past or even their own personal information. - mostly seen in movies eg. soap operas where ppl don’t know who they are

Answer 113

- **Encoding**: getting information into the system by translating it into a neural code that your brain can process. - process where perception of a stimulus or some event gets transformed into a memory. - Two ways of engaging in encoding: - **Effortful Processing:** - Intentional, effortful conscious process. - kind of similar to controlled attention - things like rehearsal, taking class notes illustrate effortful processing - **Automatic Processing:** - Unintentional process requiring minimal attention - some processes are so automatic you can easily remember them → eg. remembering the sequence of events of things you did yesterday despite you never intentionally memorizing that information - Information about frequency, spatial location, sequence, timing are events that are often encoded automatically,

Answer 114

- **Dual-coding hypothesis** - Information that can be coded verbally and visually is better remembered than only verbal information. - eg. we find that representation of concepts that we can easily visualize are more easily remembered - Dog vs. keep - eg. the word dog vs the word keep → dog is more easily remembered - eg. the instagram logo

Answer 115

1. Requires superficial structural encoding since you only have to notice how the word looks 2. Requires even more effort → you have to engage in what’s called phonological encoding by sounding out the word to yourself and then judging if it matches the sound of the other word. 3. Requires semantic encoding → need to pay attention to the meaning of the word. - In this experience, every word shown to you would be followed by a question similar to these and you would get a memory test where you would have a list of words and you would have to say which of the words were part of the test.

Answer 116

- **Levels of Processing** → suggests that the more deeply an item is encoded, the more meaning it has, the better it is encoded and the better remembered it will be. - idea is the more deeply we process information the better it will be remembered. - **Structural** - Is the word in capitals? - just perceiving the structural properties of the word would be shallow processing - **Phonemic** - Does the word rhyme with “course”? - would be intermediate - **Semantic** - Does the word fit in this sentence: - ‘The man peeled the _____’? - involves the deepest processing bc it requires us to focus on the meaning of the information. - is almost 90%

Answer 117

- In anterograde amnesia, you can’t make any new memories - Retrograde amnesia is the inability to retrieve old memories

Answer 118

- **Maintenance Rehearsal** - Repeating the information over and over - eg. like silently repeating an unfamiliar phone number while waiting to use the phone - more useful for keeping information active in short-term memory. - can also help transfer some information into long-term memory but for long-term memory it can be inefficient - Not the best way to improve recall - **Elaborative Rehearsal** - Adding to the information. - Focuses on the meaning of information so we encode information in a more meaningful way. - we elaborate on information in some way - What does the word mean? - How does the word relate to known concepts? - What does the word remind you of? (imagery)

Answer 119

- A form of organization - **Chunking:** - Combine items into larger units of meaning. - makes the items more meaningful: if they are more meaningful you will remember them better - eg. C T V Y M C A I B M K G B F B I - versus if we reorganize these into 5 larger, more meaningful chunks like CTV, YMCA, IBM, KGB, FBI then you are more likely to remember them - this arrangement is easier to keep active in short-term memory and then easier to rehearse and transfer to long-term memory

Answer 120

- Mental strategies that aide in remembering information - Eg. HOMES - for the five Great Lakes - (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior) - eg. chunking - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge - Never Eat Soggy Worms - These mnemonics work bc they focus your attention on new information and also help link to pre-existing information - Make a narrative - also helps remember sth

Answer 121

- Complex Mnemonic - **Method of Loci (memory palace)** - Link what you need to remember with a place that you know well (real or not) - Imagine a physical environment with a sequence of distinct landmarks like rooms in a house or places on your campus. - to remember a list of items or concepts you need to remember like a grocery list, you would take an imaginary stroll through this environment and form an image linking each place with an item or a concept. - to remember the components of working memory, maybe you do this and then when you need to remember these things you would just imagine maybe a house, going through the house, and these images would come up and they would link to what you have to remember - sometimes its referred to as Memory Palace

Answer 122

- where one item will help you remember another if they are linked ie. interacting. - An item is more likely to be remembered if it is imagined as being actively involved with. - They become a single chunk or whole in memory - is also the idea if you make the interaction bizarre, that you’re more likely to remember. - There is no research to support the bizarre part but there is for the interacting. - eg. in the first panel in the top left shows a piano and a cigar, they are non-interacting and non-bizarre—they’re just there. - the upper right shows the piano from below and the keys are peeling off and the cigar is burning from both ends → bizarre, but not interacting. - Bottom left is interacting with the cigar on the piano but nothing bizarre here. - Bottom right the piano is smoking the cigar → bizarre and interacting so the idea is that you’d be more likely to remember the bizarre and interacting visual mnemonic if you had to remember these things.

Answer 123

car, because it includes an easily visualized concept which allows for both visual and verbal encoding.

Answer 124

- Any time perception ends and that perceived information is still available to us, that the information is in memory storage. - these memories that are in storage can last from less than a second to forever. Storage: How information is retained over time.

Answer 125

How information is retained over time.

Answer 126

- Here, we have stimuli coming into our sensory memory. - information from our senses come in which is where are memory starts. - have the capacity to remember 3-7 units - duration of about 0.5 to 3 seconds - **Sensory memory:** briefly holds sensory information - temporary memory system - can last for a fraction of a second to a couple seconds - **Iconic store (memory):** holds visual information (fraction of a second) - eg looking from a slide to your notes - visual sensory information - **Echoic store (memory):** holds auditory information (2 or more seconds) - eg. playing a list of words or numbers → those would be the ones you’d remember - lasts longer than iconic memory - auditory memory last longer than visual memory - Studies have shown we lose this type of memory very quickly. - at first we have it all, but as we remember, it we lost a lot of it

Answer 127

- **~~Short-Term Memory~~:** temporarily stores and processes a limited amount of information. - when we’re paying attention to something, that information is going to pass from sensory memory to short-term memory. - Short-term memory is an active memory process with many different processes within it. - so our more contemporary models of memory say working memory rather than short term - **Working Memory:** same thing but active and more capacity, can manipulate info, 20-30 seconds. - handle pieces of temporary information and it can do this from different sources - once information leaves sensory memory it has to be represented by some kind of code if it’s going to be retained in working memory long enough to make its way to our long-term memory. - the kind of information we take in have to be represented in your mind. - working memory can hold a limited amount of information at a time → it is believed that most people can’t hold more than 5 to 7 meaningful items in working memory. - Our visual working memory can sometimes hold up to 30.

Answer 128

- The limits on short-term memory are concerned with the number of meaningful units that can be recalled so if 17 letters were combined into 5 meaningful units or words, then we would remember them better. - **Chunking:** - Group units into larger “bits” - Eg. phone numbers (XXX) XXX-XXXX - eg. when you’re reading numbers off to someone, when you’re writing down definitions to words, we break things down. - Rehearsal also helps us keep things in working memory → by rehearsing information we can extend how long information stays in our short-term memory - eg looking up a telephone number and then saying that to yourself silently or out loud - **Control Processes**: - Maintenance rehearsal - Simple repetition - Elaborative rehearsal - Focus on meaning. - and relating it to other things we already know. - eg. rehearsing the term iconic memory by thinking about examples of iconic memory in your own life - Both of these types of rehearsal are effective but that elaborative rehearsal is going to be more effective in transferring information to your long-term memory. Associate Networks - Theory that memory can be represented as a **network of associated concepts; nodes.** - involves forming associations between new information and other items already in memory. - the general principle that memory involves association goes to the heart of the network approach → there is an idea that memory can be represented as an associative network: a massive network of associated ideas and concepts. - The theory also states that when people think about a concept like Donald Trump there is what is called a spreading activation of related concepts. - so if you think about Donald Trump then related concepts like family and Ivanka, would be partially activated as well. - we find with more connection and making them more often, it’s more likely that our memory for this association will be accessed. - so if you think about Donald Trump in Affairs more often, then that’s what’s going to more easily come to mind when you think of one or the other—you strengthen that connection.

Answer 129

- If we pay attention, information goes to our working memory. - To keep that information there we can engage in rehearsal (different types) and we have a capacity for about 7 to 9 chunks, really 7 plus or - nine. - Duration in working memory of about 5 to 15 seconds without rehearsal - if we rehearse information we can remember it for longer→ if we don’t rehearse, information is forgotten.

Answer 130

Elaborative rehearsal bc it makes the information more meaningful by attaching it to existing knowledges, beliefs and experiences

Answer 131

- **Long-Term Memory:** storage of information that lasts from minutes to *forever* - like a library of really durable memories - eg read a list of 15 word immediately after the last word is read you have to recall as many words as you can and can recall the words in any order you want. - most results will show that the words at the end of the list and beginning of the list are the easiest to recall.

Answer 132

- **Serial Position Effect:** - Describes the relationship between a world’s position in a list and its probability of recall - recall is influenced by a word’s position in a list.

Answer 133

- **Primacy Effect** - we remember things at the beginning of the list

Answer 134

- **Recency Effect** - we remember things at the end of the list (most recent to us)

Answer 135

- Unless tested immediately, we don’t see the recency effect, just the primacy effect. - bc according to the 3-stage model, as the first few words enter short-term memory, we can quickly rehearse them and transfer them into long-term memory. - but as we hear more and more words, our short term memory reaches capacity, so you can’t keep repeating the words before that next word comes. - If this is correct, the primacy effect should disappear if we can prevent people from rehearsing the early words. - If we say the list faster, that primacy effect disappears. - Then for the recency effect, those last few words have this benefit of not being bumped out of short term memory by any new information. - There’s nothing else happening after the last few words. All we have to do is read out the last words that linger in our short-term memory. - So overall, primacy effect is due to the transfer of early words into long-term memory - Recency effect is due to short-term memory and we see this when we look at results when testing with a delay.

Answer 136

- **Implicit memory:** memory that is expressed through past experiences, unconscious or automatic memories - memories that you do not put into words - eg. think of memories of past experiences unconscious or implicit memories, eg. riding a bike → you have implicit memory for this of the motor actions needed to ride a bike. - can also include classical conditioning, so associative learning

Answer 137

- **Procedural Memory** - Cannot be verbalized - skills and actions (even some conditioned responses) - eg. driving → you use implicit memories of how to drive and how to get where you’re going so you don’t crash your car or go in the wrong direction. - skilled behaviours that become automatic - hard to explain - Eg. like explaining everything that’s going on with walking

Answer 138

- **Classical conditioning:** - ? - here we could have a memory that depends on changes in responsiveness of neurons involved in perception of repeated stimuli

Answer 139

- **Explicit Memory**: memory that is consciously retrieved. - involves conscious or intentional memory retrieval, like when you consciously recognize or recall sth.

Answer 140

- **Declarative Memory:** - Can be verbalized (you can declare them) - eg. capitals, a lot of exams test your explicit memory. - Consists of: 1. **Episodic:** personal experiences; episodes - A person’s memory of past experiences that can identified as having occurred at a specific time or place. - You can remember the event/the episode when it occurred - eg. your 25th birthday → if you can think of where you were and what you did, that’s more of your episodic memory 2. **Semantic:** general factual knowledge - knowledge for concepts, categories, facts that are independent of your personal experience. - You might not remember when and where you learned this information, but you know this information. - eg. you know what Jello is, thinking about the capitals of countries, phrases → ppl who don’t play baseball, have never played baseball, but you still know what “3 strikes and you’re out” means - it is your vast knowledge that you acquired at some point in some way

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- Here the primacy effect occurs because items presented earlier have been encoded into long-term memory. - Recency effect occurs because items presented later are still available in your working memory.

Answer 142

- Long-term memory can be seen as passive → we’re not aware of our long-term memories that are stored and it seems like they are just dormant in our mind until we need them. - But the storage of long-term memory results from a lot of active processes over time. → consolidation - eg think about when you hit your head and you immediately forget what has happened immediately after - the head injury disrupts your consolidation - **Consolidation** - Gradual process of memory storage in the brain - “Cells that fire together, wire together.” - Memory results from changes in synaptic connections. - memories are stored in different parts of the brain and are linked through memory circuits - When one neuron excites another, the connection between them strengthens. - so the firing becomes more likely to cause the connected neuron to fire. - long-term memory involves the creation of neural circuits.

Answer 143

- LTP was identified as the process of strengthening synaptic connections, making the postsynaptic neuron more easily activated by presynaptic neurons. - so the process that’s happening in memory storage is its pretty much serving as a model for how neuroplasticity may underlie long-term memory. - also supports the previous idea of cells firing together, wiring together. - Intense electrical stimulation of a neuron increases the likelihood of firing in connected neurons. - researchers first established that stimulating one neuron with single electrical pulses leads to a certain amount of firing in a second neuron. - the researchers then apply intense electrical stimulation to the first neuron and they administer a single electrical pulse to the first neuron and measure the second neuron’s firing. - if LTP has happened, the intense stimulation would have increased the likelihood that stimulating the first neuron produced firing in the second neuron. → that is what we find - “Cells that fire together, wire together.” - a 2016 study found that an important part of LTP is the NMDA receptor on the post-synaptic neuron - **Study on NMDA Receptors** - **NMDA Receptor** - type of glutamate receptor that responds only when large amounts of glutamate are present in the synapse and when the postsynaptic neuron is depolarized. - so LTP leads to an increase in the number of glutamate receptors in the postsynaptic neuron which increases its responsivity to glutamate released by the presynaptic neuron. - it can also produce more synapse between neurons - “Cells that fire together, wire together.” - So memory results from strengthening synaptic connections among networks of neurons.

Answer 144

- Can think of retrieval as the expression of memory after encoding and storage. - Sth to ask ourselves is: what determines which memory is retrieved at any time? → retrieval cues - **Retrieval:** Process of transferring information from long-term memory back into working memory (consciousness) - **Retrieval Cues:** any stimulus that helps/promotes memory recall. - eg a fragrance, a strawberry perfume, a favourite song, a familiar building. - can be intentional or unintentional → eg a question on an exam

Answer 145

- Memory for the circumstances in which you learned about a very surprising and emotionally arousing event - Recollections that are so vivid, so clear that we can picture them as if they were a snapshot of a moment in time → they are most likely to occur for very distinctive positive or negative events that evoke very strong emotional responses. - not very accurate though - National disaster memories - researchers have interviewed ppl in natural disasters and then reinterviewed them years later → typically ppl’s memories are found to be flawed and many details of the memory will change. - we are usually more confident in our incorrect memories - Grow less accurate with the passage of time - Shows that enhanced emotional reactions to some event does not guarantee better retrieval of that information. - eg. 9/11 → if you ask ppl where they were during 9/11 most people can vividly recall where they were. - eg. COVID → when we first heard about COVID

Answer 146

- Matching the context of the situation - Eg. if someone was part of some sort of crime and they might not be able to remember anything about it until they are back where it happened and the memory kind of unlocks - eg. studying in the same place where you take a test → increasing the retrieval - eg. chewing gum while you study and then chewing gum while you take your exam. - **Encoding specificity principle** - Retrieval can be increased by matching the conditions at retrieval to the conditions that existed at encoding. - this enhancement occurs because stimuli associated with an event may become encoded as part of the memory and then may later serve as a retrieval cue. - Three specific ways to achieve matching/encoding specificity: 1. Context-dependent memory 2. State-dependent memory 3. Mood-congruent recall **Context-Dependent Memory** - The phenomenon that it is typically easier to remember something in the same environment in which it was originally learned or experienced - external cues - eg. if you go to your old elementary school or neighbourhood, sights and sounds might trigger memories of teachers, classmates and friends - Scuba diver study - in one study, researchers asked scuba divers to learn some lists of words underwater and some on dry land. - when the divers were later tested in the two environments, the list learned underwater was recalled better underwater and those learned on land were better recalled on land. - better recall when there was the same context (land and land; water and water) - when randomly assigned university students study material in either a quiet or noisy room, they later displayed better memory on short answer questions when the environment matched

Answer 147

- Retrieval can be increased by matching the conditions at retrieval to the conditions that existed at encoding. - this enhancement occurs because stimuli associated with an event may become encoded as part of the memory and then may later serve as a retrieval cue. - Three specific ways to achieve matching/encoding specificity: 1. Context-dependent memory 2. State-dependent memory 3. Mood-congruent recall

Answer 148

- The phenomenon that it is typically easier to remember something in the same environment in which it was originally learned or experienced - external cues - eg. if you go to your old elementary school or neighbourhood, sights and sounds might trigger memories of teachers, classmates and friends - Scuba diver study - in one study, researchers asked scuba divers to learn some lists of words underwater and some on dry land. - when the divers were later tested in the two environments, the list learned underwater was recalled better underwater and those learned on land were better recalled on land. - better recall when there was the same context (land and land; water and water) - when randomly assigned university students study material in either a quiet or noisy room, they later displayed better memory on short answer questions when the environment matched

Answer 149

- Learning is associated with a particular internal state - internal cues - Our ability to retrieve information is great when our internal state at the time of retrieval matches our original state during learning. - eg. students who read course material while exercising on a bicycle, treadmill or stair-climbing machine. → researchers found that material learned when they were aroused during aerobic exercise was later recalled more effectively if they were once again aerobically aroused rather than at rest - and vice-versa: material learned at rest was better recalled at rest - is a reason why events experienced during a drug state may be difficult to recall later in a drug-free state. - many frugs: alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, barbituates, nicotine, antihistimines have shown that information recall is poorer when there is a mismatch between a person’s state during learning and testing. → this finding does not mean drugs improve memory during initial learning. - Non-drug examples as well: - Mood, level of tiredness, physical fatigue - a match in these things all help in matching learning and testing or learning and recall.

Answer 150

**Mood-Congruent Recall** - Tendency to recall information or events that are congruent with our current mood. - eg. when happy we are more likely to remember positive events - when we’re sad we’re more likely to remember negative events. - IS NOT like learning in a happy mood makes recall betetr when we’re in that mood again - Different from memory-dependent memory

Answer 151

Procedural memory

Answer 152

- **Memory Reconsolidation** - When a memory is retrieved, it undergoes a process of restorage, known as reconsolidation. - a restorage of the memory after retrieval - Two purposes: - **Memory Updating:** Incorporates new, relevant information into the original memory, potentially altering the memory content. - when memory for a past event is retrieved and information in the current experience is relevant. - the new information is incorporated into the original memory through reconsolidation. - means this new memory can differ from the old memory → like updating a file - some think that reconsolidation is triggered when aspects of the retrieval context cue that there may be new relevant information to learn at the time of the memory retrieval - this causes a difference in what you expect from a memory and then the update of the memory. - **Memory strengthening**: Reinforces and solidifies the memory face, improving long-term retention - **Retrieval practice** - Actively recalling information to enhance memory retention. - involves testing yourself on the material you learned to reinforce memory retention and improve long-term learning. - Flashcards, practice questions, summarizing.

Answer 153

- Dementia: Refers to impaired memory and other cognitive deficits that accompany brain degeneration and interfere with normal functioning. - more than 8 different causes and different types of dementia - can occur at any point in life

Answer 154

- **Alzheimer’s Disease:** Severe retrograde and anterograde amnesia - progressive brain disorder - most common cause of dementia in adults over the age of 65. - early symptoms include forgetfulness, poor judgement, confusions and disorientation., memory for recent events and new information is especially impaired. - Starts at the hippocampus and then spreads. - It can spread to the temporal lobe and the frontal lobe and other cortical regions. - What happens is people end up having an abnormal amount of plague and tangles in their brain. - Plague are clumps of protein fragments that build up on the outside of the neuron - Tangles are fibres that get twisted and wound together within the neurons. - The neurons are damaged and die, brain tissue shrinks and communication among neurons in impaired as the disease disrupts several neurotransmitter systems, including the acetylcholine system which plays a role in memory. - As this happens, working memory, long-term memory worsen, individuals may lose the ability to learn new tasks, or remember new information or experiences, forget how to perform familiar tasks, and can have trouble recognizing close family members. - Ultimately, someone can lose the ability to speak, walk and lose control of bodily functions.

Answer 155

- How our memories aren’t as stable as we think they are - We know that it’s normal for human memory to be biased, for it to be distorted or prone to forgetting. - We tend to forget a lot more than we remember - Forgetting has a long history in physiological sciences - Ebbinghaus took a look at how long it took people to relearn lists of nonsense syllables that they had previously learned. - He found very strong evidence that forgetting occurs rapidly at first and then levels off after a few days. - And while the rate of forgetting levels off after a few days, you are still more likely to remember something that happened last months versus something that happened last year - Some research suggests that forgetting seems to continue until at least 5 years after learning - So if a memory last longer than 5 years, it’s most likely that you will remember it for life.

Answer 156

- **Savings** - Relearning information takes less time than learning it initially - High school math, language skills, or any previously learned concepts.

Answer 157

- **Reasons for Forgetting** - Lack of recall and interference from other information - **Proactive Interference** - Old information inhibits the ability to remember new information - maybe you’re studying for your psych midterm and then switch to studying for your bio midterm and then you take your bio midterm → your performance may be impaired because of your knowledge about psychology - **Retroactive Interference** - New information inhibits the ability to remember old information - eg. when you take your psych midterm your performance might suffer because you recall the new bio material. - → For both proactive and retroactive interference a key is that competing information displaces information that we’re trying to remember, trying to retrieve.

Answer 158

- **Blocking** - Temporary inability to remember something - Forgetting a favourite song’s name, blanking on an exam, forgetting your lines in a play

Answer 159

- **Tip-of-the-Tongue Phenomenon** - Knowing part of the word but unable to fully recall it - eg. you know how many syllables but you can’t remember what it is - increases with age, thought to be due to interfere of words that are similar in some way

Answer 160

- **Absentmindedness** - Shallow encoding of events due to lack of attention. - Forgetting where you put your keys/someone’s name - due to shallow encoding → eg bc you were looking at their face and not thinking of their name

Answer 161

- **Persistence** - Unwanted memories that are repeatedly remembered, despite the desire not to have them. - Recalling an embarrassing event repeatedly - eg tripping in front of everyone at lunch and everyone laughs at you, and you think about it for days and even sometimes when you’re trying to fall asleep. - **PTSD** - a severe form of persistence where traumatic memories are relived, causing significant distress.

Answer 162

Occurs when people misremember the time, place, people or circumstances involved in a memory

Answer 163

- **Source Misattribution** - Misremembering the time, place, people, or circumstances of a memory - False fame effect → in this study researchers had participants read out loud a list of made up names. The participants were told that it was a study on pronunciation. - The next day, participants took place in what they were told was an unrelated study → in this study they read a list of names and said whether the person was famous or not - The idea was that the participants said some of the made up names were famous bc the previous day they had read the names but couldn’t remember when or where, just that they knew the name.

Answer 164

- **Source Amnesia** - Remembering an event but not recalling where the information came from - Earliest childhood memory → how vivid is it? are you actually recalling the memory or are you recalling a retelling of that event from your parent or caregiver? - eg maybe it is something you saw in a video or photograph or overheard sb talking about.

Answer 165

- **Infantile Amnesia** - Inability to remember events before ages 3-4 - Developing prefrontal cortex and language abilities are needed for lasting episodic memories - we believe the ability to form lasting episodic memories needs a more developed prefrontal cortex and language abilities. - so if you have a specific memory from before 3 or 4 it is most likely that that memory comes from another source.

Answer 166

- **Cryptomnesia** - Thinking you’ve come up with a new idea when it’s actually an old memory misattributed to yourself. - Plagiarism - eg. when you’re writing a paper and took notes verbatim and then come to think that you wrote what you took the notes on. - commonly happens in music too with plagiarism. - a version of source amnesia where a person thinks that they have come up with a new idea, but instead they are retrieving an old memory and fail to attribute the idea to the original source.

Answer 167

- **Susceptibility** - development of biased memories from misleading information. - **Example:** Participants viewing a video and being influenced by how questions were worded. - has really interested Elizabeth Loftus and her research team and colleagues - many of these studies worked by showing participants a video of some kind of event and then the participants were asked specific questions. - The idea is if the question was worded differently, that it would alter the participants memory of the event. - eg. participants viewed a car, a red datson, approaching a stop sign and the second group viewed the same thing except the stop sign was a yield sign. - each group was asked, “did another car pass the red datsun while it was stopped at the stop sign?” - in both groups there were participants who claimed that the datsun did stop at the stop sign even though some of them saw the yield sign. - other studies support that when it is real life versus the lab, people are much more accurate and stable with their memories. → they suggest it is the emotional part of the memory that helps and what is still questioned is if the initial memories are stable in the first place. - and if they are inaccurate, then retelling the event over and over to friends and family strengthens that inaccurate incorrect memory.

Answer 168

- Participants watched videos of car accidents. - Those who heard “smashed” estimated higher speeds and falsely recalled broken glass compared to those who heard “hit” - was no broken glass in the video, but almost a third of those who heard ‘smashed’ falsely recalled seeing broken glass. - most of those who heard “hit” did not recall glass breaking. - sour, candy, sugar, bitter, good, taste, tooth, nice, honey ,s oda, chocolate, heart, cake, tart, pie - eg if you recalled sweet, or thought you did, you might have experienced a false memory bc sweet was never on the list but all the words were related to sweetness. - This type of false memory occurs bc each word makes you think of related words. → this semantic knowledge of related words leads to potential confusion about which of the related words you actually read. - a brain imaging study showed that related words produced overlapping patterns of brain activity in the temporal lobe where semantic information is processed. - so even though false memories are false, people are often pretty confident in saying they have seen or heard something recalled falsely.

Answer 169

- **Repressed Memories** - Memories of traumatic events that are unconsciously blocked - **False Memory Implantation** - Family members told a child a false story about getting lost in a mall. - Is easier to implant a false memory that you can create an image of: - two weeks later, when asked about the made up memory of getting lost in a mall → the child would say that it happened and describe it in detail. - the idea is that when ppl imagine events happening, they form a mental image of the event and they might later confuse that mental image with a real memory. - Children tend to be more susceptible to this.

Answer 170

- Loftus et all: Little credible evidence supports the accuracy of recovered memories - Possibility if implanting false memories through therapeutic methods - there is evidence that methods like hypnosis, age regression and guided recall of dreams can implant false memories. - Believed she was abused and involved in satanic rituals - When she expressed doubt, she was told she was in denial. - other members of the group also had memories of being abused and being in a satanic cult - Leaving the group, she believed she had not been abused or involved in the rituals. - People on both sides of the argument have very strong beliefs because these are very high-stakes cases - While false recovered memories are possible, what are the implications of dismissing all adult reports of early life abuse and ignoring victims.

Answer 171

Episodic memory bc it is a personal memory of an event that occurred at a time or place

Answer 172

1. **Encoding** - *the process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory*; 2. **Storage** - *the process of maintaining information in memory over time*; 3. **Retrieval** - *the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored*.

Answer 173

- *process whereby repeated communication across the synapse between neurons strengthens the connection, making further communication easier.* - Long-term potentiation has a number of properties that indicate to researchers the important role it plays in long-term memory storage: it occurs in several pathways within the hippocampus; it can be induced rapidly; and it can last for a long time. - Drugs that block LTP can turn rats into rodent versions of patient HM: The animals have great difficulty remembering where they’ve been recently and become easily lost in a maze.

Answer 174

- *external information that is associated with stored information and helps bring it to mind*. - can be incredibly effective - In one experiment, undergrads studied lists of words, such as *table* *peach* *bed* *apple* *chair* *grape* and *desk*. - Later, the students were asked to write down all the words from the list that they could remember. When they were absolutely sure that they had emptied their memory stores of every last word, the experimenters again asked the students to remember the words on the list. - This time, however, the experimenters provided retrieval cues, such as “furniture” or “fruit”. - The students who were sure that they had done all the remembering they possibly could were suddenly able to remember more words. - These results suggest that information is sometimes *available* in memory even wehn it is momentarily *inaccessible* and that retrieval cues help us bring inaccessible information to mind. - Eg. encountering a friend may automatically remind you of the movie you recently saw with he

Answer 175

is the idea that memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match.

Answer 176

- *a process by which retrieving an item from long-term memory impairs subsequent recall of related items.* - Eg. participants first studied word pairs consisting of a category name and an example of an item from that category. - Then they practiced recalling some of the items in response to a category cue and the initial letters of the target item. - For instance, teh fruit category participants would practice recalling *orange* to the cue “fruit *or*_______,” but would not practice recalling *apple*. - The general idea was that while they were practicing recall of *orange*, participants suppressed the competitor item *apple*. - For other categories (eg. *trees*), no retrieval practice was given for any of the studied pairs. - Later, the participants were given a final test for all the words they initially studied. It was not suprisoing that on the final test, participants remembered words that they practiced (eg. *orange*) better than words from categories that they did not practice (eg. *elm*). - But what happened on the final test to the items such as *apple*, which were not practiced and which participants presumably had to suppress while they practiced recall of related items? - Those items were recalled most poorly of all, indicating that retrieving the similar target items (eg. *orange*) caused subsequent forgetting of the related but suppressed items (eg. *apple*) - In fact, even if you don’t successfully retrieve the target item, the act of suppressing the competitors while you attempt to retrieve the target still reduces your ability to retrieve the competitors at a later time. - Retrieval-induced forgetting can occur during conversations: When a speaker selectively talks about some aspects of memories shared with a listener and doesn’t mention related information, the listener later has a harder time remembering the omitted events, as does the speaker. - This effect occurs even for important or vivid memories, such as those for major world events. - Second, retrieval-induced forgetting can affect eyewitness memory. - When witnesses to a staged crime are questioned about some details of the crime scene, theri ability to later recall related details that they were not asked about it impaired, compared with that of witnesses who initially were not questioned at all. - These findings suggest that initial interviews with eyewitnesses should be as complete as possible in order to avoid potential retrieval-induced forgetting of significant details that are not probed during an interview.

Answer 177

- **Explicit memory** - *occurs when people consciously or intentionally retrieve past experiences.* - Recalling last summer’s vacation, incidents from a novel you just read, or facts you studied for a test all involve explicit memory. - anytime you start a sentence with “I remember…” you are talking about explicit memory. - **Implicit Memory** - *occurs when past experience influence later behaviour and performance, even without an effort to remember them or an awareness of the recollection.*