Lecture 3 Flashcards
What is selective attention?
the ability to select certain stimuli in an environment, ignore distracting information
What is bottom up/exogenous processing?
automatic capture
What is top down/endogenous processing?
intentional control
What is the dichotic listening task?
ignore one ear and repeat what you hear from the other ear
- participants have no idea what was said into the ear they’re told to ignore
What is the cocktail party effect?
its like the dichotic listening task; but the participants name is said– this message was not filtered out
What was Treisman’s finding about the cocktail party effect?
Meaning (in addition to physical characteristics) is also used to filter information
- a little bit of energy is spent on listening to the background
What is inattentional blindness?
You don’t notice something that would stand out as odd (byproduct of selective attention)
What are cognitive resources?
mental energy– everyone’s is limited
What is cognitive load?
amount of cognitive resources needed to do task
what is change blindness?
change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer doesn’t notice it
What is consciousness?
awareness and experience of self and the environment
What is dual processing?
mind has two tracks- information is simultaneously processed on separate conscious/unconscious tracks
What are the two tracks in dual processing?
conscious (explicit)– processes occur with awareness, problem solving, naming objects
unconscious (implicit) – processes occur withOUT awareness, walking, acquiring phobias
What is the pathway of seeing?
visual field–> nasal retina –> optic nerve –> optic chiasm –> primary visual cortex
What is blindsight?
cortical blindness due to damage in the primary visual cortex
What is spatial neglect?
unaware of one side of field of vision due to brain damage
- affects vision contralateral to the damage
- affects memory, can’t recognize own limbs fail to clean/groom one side of the body
What is extinction (spatial neglect)?
failure to perceive stimuli opposite to the lesion when the stimuli is presented to both sides
- influenced by object type (good at knowing if the objects are different, bad at knowing that there are two things)
What is Balint’s syndrome?
one object reaches awareness at a time, cannot localize an object in space, items seem to appear/dissapear
What is Balint’s syndrome caused by?
bilateral damage to the posterior parietal cortex
What is the definition of sleep?
an altered state of consciousness, distinct from a coma, anaesthesia, or hibernation
- brain is still 100% active, auditory cortex is still active
What controls the circadian rhythm? what chemical regulates it?
superchiasmatic nucleus, part of the hypothalamus– controls melatonin production
What is REM rebound?
return to more REM sleep after a period of less; you can skip the normal progression of phases and go right to REM
What are the sleep phases?
phase 1/N1: light sleep
phase 2/N2: non REM/light
phase 3/4: deep sleep
REM: rapid eye movement, dream state
Why do we sleep? (5)
need to protect (need to graze/bad at hiding), need to recuperate, supports growth, restore/rebuild memories, feeds creative thinking
