Labs

Question 1

what is memory?

Answer 1

a trace of a previous experience that can be used for prediction of events `

Question 2

what is sensory memory?

Answer 2

memory using the senses eg visual, auditory, olfactory. Has a very short memory duration to store the memory, only hold information for short time

Question 3

what is short term memory?

Answer 3

storing a small amount of information in your mind then needing to process it for a bit before it can enter long term memory eg remembering a list of words or a phone number

Question 4

what is working memory?

Answer 4

memory of something you will USE, interaction between short- and long-term memory (passes the memories between them), using information from long term memory to short term memory when we use it

Question 5

what is long term memory?

Answer 5

memory of something that lasts a long time

Question 6

what are spatial memories?

Answer 6

memory that is remembered and used to navigate around a place, can be a conceptual distance as well

Question 7

what is procedural memory?

Answer 7

automatic memories, things you don’t need to think about but remember eg how to walk, speak, ride a bike

Question 8

what is episodic memory?

Answer 8

memories of specific events, including how you felt in that experience eg going to the beach with friends

Question 9

what are semantic memories?

Answer 9

facts and knowledge, general knowledge for pub quiz

Question 10

what is allocentric space?

Answer 10

uses landmarks to navigate whereabouts and is the same regardless to who the observer is eg ‘the child is 20m away from the castle’ so the location description is based on other objects ‘Unipol is next to the Oval’

Question 11

what is egocentric space?

Answer 11

focuses on the individual when navigating eg ‘Unipol is in front of me, ‘I am 5m away from the castle’

Question 12

spatial information can be location based or movement based, what is the difference?

Answer 12

location: uses identifiable features of the environment as reference when navigating
movement: using movement cues to create a cognitive map, but is prone to errors

Question 13

what is piloting?

Answer 13

location based, uses trigonometry to find the position of something hidden using the positions of other landmarks around it – used by pilots

Question 14

what is beacon homing?

Answer 14

location based, use this more than piloting, move towards the landmark that is close to the hidden thing

Question 15

what are the five types of optic cues used in movement based navigation?

Answer 15

• optic flow
• kinesthetic information
• sensory flow
• motor efferent copy
• vestibular information

Question 16

why was it hard to navigate in Venice?

Answer 16

because the only available movement cue was optic flow

Question 17

what does it mean for the brain to be like a black box?

Answer 17

we know what goes into the brain and we know what comes out of the brain, but don’t know what happens in between

Question 18

what is the subtraction method?

Answer 18

used to measure total reaction time by subtracting different sections of it to find how long each process takes

Question 19

what happens in the choice reaction time task?

Answer 19

all 4 (most complex): stimuli detection, stimuli identification, response selection and executing the response

Question 20

what happens in the go/no go task?

Answer 20

gets rid of the response selection part - so only one key is pressed (stimuli detection, identification and execution of the response)

Question 21

what happens in the simple reaction time task?

Answer 21

gets rid of the response selection part and the stimuli identification - so only one key is pressed and only one stimuli is presented (only involves stimuli detection and execution of the response)

Question 22

what assumptions are made for the subtraction method to be valid?

Answer 22

assumption of seriality: that the processes don’t overlap
assumption of independence: that they aren’t dependent on each other, that one can only happen because the other has happened previously

Question 23

what is the speed-accuracy trade off?

Answer 23

some people choose to respond faster but are less accurate or choose to be more accurate but takes longer

Question 24

what is a signal detection task?

Answer 24

any decision where you have to choose yes/no is a signal detection task like hypothesis testing

Question 25

what elements are present in a signal detection task?

Answer 25

signal, noise and decision

Question 26

what are the 4 response biases when making a decision?

Answer 26

correct yes decision = hit
incorrect yes decision = false alarm
incorrect no decision = miss
correct no decision = correct rejection

Question 27

what is response criterion?

Answer 27

measures response bias mathematically; a positive c means you are biased towards a NO response, negative c means you are biased towards a YES response

Question 28

what is sensitivity when decision-making (d’)?

Answer 28

ability to correctly identify when a signal is present in noise, compared to when it is not, making clear decisions

Question 29

sensitivity high vs sensitivity low

Answer 29

when sensitivity is high, there is little or no uncertainty and lacks response bias
when sensitivity is low, there is a lot of uncertainty and there is high response bias

Question 30

what are the 4 attributes of an EEG trace?

Answer 30

frequency, amplitude, direction and latency

Question 31

what is the optic flow movement cue?

Answer 31

how the visual information changes as we move through the environment

Question 32

what is the kinesthetic information movement cue?

Answer 32

tells us how far we have walked, slopes, the terrain

Question 33

what is the sensory flow movement cue?

Answer 33

involves other senses not vision

Question 34

what is the motor efferent movement cue?

Answer 34

monitors movements, nervous system takes note that we take steps forward

Question 35

what is the vestibular information movement cue?

Answer 35

balance and position in gravity, and can be worn out with age

Question 36

what is stimulus time locking?

Answer 36

EEG technique where we time the brain activity from the exact same point during the trial, 250ms after it is shown, this means we have different brain recordings for brain activity during the same process, then the scans are averaged out