Making Sense of the Environment Flashcards
What are the 4 main types of brainwaves?
Alpha, beta, delta, theta
Alpha waves
8-13 Hz
Associated with relaxed awake states; daydreaming; light meditation
Disappear as you become drowsy, but can reappear later when you’re in deep sleep
Beta Waves
12-30 Hz
Associated with normal waking consciousness and concentration
If you maintain this heightened alertness for too long, your beta levels get really high and you may experience stress, anxiety, and restlessness
Theta Waves
4-7 Hz
Associated with drowsiness or deep meditation
Appear right after you fall asleep and are sleeping lightly
Appears in N1 (NREM)
What is the order of sleep stages that occurs through one sleep cycle?
N1 - N2 - N3 - N2 - REM - N1
What are some characteristics of sleep stage N1?
Stage between sleep and wakefulless
Theta waves
May experience hypnagogic hallucinations or hypnagogic jerks
What are some characteristics of sleep stage N2?
Harder to awaken than N1
More theta waves
Sleep spindles, K complexes
What are sleep spindles? In what stage(s) of sleep do they appear?
Stage N2
Bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain activity
Some researchers think they inhibit certain cognitive processes or perceptions so that we maintain a tranquil state during sleep
For example, some sleep spindles are associated with people’s ability to sleep through loud noises
What are k-complexes? In what stage(s) of sleep do they appear?
Appear in N2
Thought to suppress cortical arousal and keep you asleep
Also thought to help with sleep-based memory consolidation, which is the theory that some memories are transferred to your long-term memory during sleep
Even though they occur naturally, you can make them occur by just brushing against someone’s skin who is in this stage of sleep; The brain processes the non-threatening stimuli and suppresses the processing of that stimuli to help keep you asleep
What are some characteristics of sleep stage N3?
Slow-wave sleep
Delta waves (0.5 - 2Hz)
Really difficult to wake up
When someone might sleepwalk or sleeptalk
Why does sleep deprivation increase one’s risk for obesity?
When you’re sleep deprived, your body makes more cortisol, which tells your body to make more fat
You also produce more of the hormone that tells you you’re hungry
Sleep apnea most seriously disturbs what stage of sleep?
N3 sleep
With regards to breathing-related sleep disorders, generally the cause is from which 3 key areas of the body?
- Problem arising from the brain, the brain being a key central organ that controls the respiratory centers that help regulate the lungs
- Problem with the upper airways; An obstruction to the airways from the mouth/nose to the lungs
- Problem with the lungs themselves, or the chest wall; Anything that stops the lungs from being able to expand out
What’s an example of a sleep-related disorder that arises from problems in the airway? How is it diagnosed?
Obstructive sleep apnea
Diagnosed through a sleep study or a polysomnography; Looking for 15+ apneas/evidence of obstruction per hour
What is an example of a sleep-related disorder that arises from problems in the brain? How is it diagnosed?
Central Sleep Apnea
Looking for the presence of apnea with no obstruction
Criteria: 5+ apneas/hour during sleep
Problem with the brain’s control system for ventilation
As you enter into hypnosis, an EEG would pick up what type(s) of brain waves?
Alpha waves (indicate an awake, but relaxed state)
What is an example of a sleep-related disorder that arises from problems in the lungs?
Hypoventilation Disorders
We don’t ventilate our lungs enough → can get a buildup of CO2, and in some cases we can not have enough oxygen
Low oxygen can lead to problems with the brain over time (chronically, can lead to a degree of cognitive impairment), problems with heart (some may develop arrhythmias over time), or problems with our blood, polycythemia, which is an elevated amount of red blood cells in our blood
What are the 3 major theories that try to explain selective attention?
- Broadbent’s Early Selection Theory
- Deutsch and Deutsch’s Late Selection Theory
- Treisman’s Attenuation Theory
Broadbent’s Early Selection Theory
Attempts to explain the process of selective attention
- All the information in your environment goes into your sensory register, which briefly registers or stores all of the sensory input you get
- Then this input gets transferred to the selective filter right away, which identifies what it should be attending to via basic physical characteristics
- Selected information moves along so that perceptual processes can occur, which assign meaning to the information
- Then you can engage in other cognitive processes, such as deciding how to respond
What are problems with Broadbent’s Early Selection Theory? What theory tried to explain this?
If you completely filter out the unattended information before it gets assigned meaning, then you shouldn’t be able to identify your own name when it’s spoken in an unattended ear (cocktail party effect)
Deutsch and Deutsch’s Late Selection Theory
Deutsch and Deutsch’s Late Selection Theory
Moved Broadbent’s selective filter to after the perceptual processes
→ This means that you actually do register and assign everything meaning, but then your selective filter decides what to pass on to your conscious awareness
What is questionable about Deutsch and Deutsch’s Late Selection Theory? What theory tried to address this?
Given the limited resource of attention, and the fact that we know our brains are super efficient, it seems wasteful to spend all that effort assigning meaning to stuff you’ll never need
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory
Treisman’s Attenuation Theory
- Instead of a complete filter, we have something called an attenuator, which weakens, but doesn’t eliminate the input from the unattended ear
- Then some of it gets through to the perceptual processes, so we still assign meaning to stuff in the unattended ear, it’s just not as high priority
- If, at this point, you realize the unattended stuff is actually important, then you’ll switch over your attention and attenuate what you were previously listening to
Spotlight Model of Attention
Even though we can only consciously attend to a small amount of information at a time, we know that a lot of other information is being taken in by our bodies, and we seem to be aware of that information, at least on an unconscious level
Resource Model of Attention
We have limited resources when it comes to attention, resources that are easily overtaxed if we try to pay attention to multiple things at once
What do both the Spotlight Model of Attention and Resource Model of Attention suggest about our ability to multitask?
We probably aren’t actually very good at it!
What are the 3 main factors that influence our ability to multitask?
- Task similarity
- Task difficulty
- Practice
Information Processing Model
Proposes that our brains are similar to computers in that we get input from the environment, process it, and then output decision
- Sensory memory: when we first interact with our environment; Includes iconic and echoic memory
- What we pay attention to is passed onto working memory; Different components to process different types of information: visuo-spatial sketchpad processes visual/spatial information; phonological loop processes verbal information
- Central Executive: Coordinates the efforts of the visuo-spatial sketchpad and phonological loop; integrated representation that gets stored in the episodic buffer, which acts as a connector to long-term memory
- Long term memory
2 main types of long term memory
Explicit (delcarative)
Implicit (procedural)
What are 2 types of explicit memory?
Semantic Memory: Having to do with words; Remembering simple facts, like the meaning of words
Episodic Memory: Memory for events
What are 2 types of implicit memory?
Procedural Memories: Memories for procedures, like riding a bike
Priming: Previous experience influences your current interpretation of an event
Retrieval
Any time you pull something out of your long-term memory and bring it into your working memory
Includes free recall, cued recall, and recognition
What is source monitoring, and how does it relate to human memory?
Source monitoring: keeping track of where various information came from, the source of the information
One reason false/misleading information can have such a strong impact on memory is that people often have difficulty with source monitoring
What are the 2 main types of memory interference?
Retroactive Interference: Interference that goes backwards; Some new piece of learning seems to reach back and impair your ability to retrieve something you used to know
Proactive Interference: Interference acting forward; Something you learned in the past gets in the way of your ability to learn and retrieve something in the future
What cognitive processes decline with age?
Recall
Episodic memory: Often memories formed a long time ago will be relatively stable, but forming new episodic memories becomes more difficult
Processing speed
Divided attention
What cognitive processes remain stable with age?
Implicit memory
Recognition memory (Once you learn something, your ability to pick it out of a list remains the same)
What cognitive processes improve with age?
Semantic memory (improves until ~60, then declines)
Crystalized Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence
Identify which of the following decline, remain stable, or improve with age:
- Semantic memory
- Divided Attention
- Implicit Memory
- Processing Speed
- Episodic Memory
- Recognition Memory
- Emotional Reasoning
- Crystalized Intelligence
- Recall
- Improves (until ~60, then declines)
- Declines
- Stable
- Declines
- Declines
- Stable
- Improves
- Improves
- Declines
