Midterm 2 Flashcards
Transduction
The conversion from sensory stimulus energy to action potential is known as transduction.
When sensory info is detected by sensory receptors, sensation has occurred.
Light that enters the eye causes changes in cells in back of the eyes, these cells relay messages I’m the form of action potentials to the central nervous system.
Synesthia
When the brain routes sensory info thru multiple unrelated senses. Eg. Info from eyes gets sent to auditory cortex while info from ears gets sent to visual cortex. Eg. Looking at stars causes a humming in the ears.
Selective attention
The brain prioritizing one thing and filtering out the rest.
Rods
More efficient at night. Absorb light on one end and the other end releases neurotransmitters black and white.
Responsible for vision at low light levels.
Cones
High performance at high light levels. Capable of color vision.
Optic nerve
Comprised of millions of nerve fibers that send visual messages to your brain to help you see. Optic nerve is connected directly to the brain.
Optic disk
The optic disc (blind spot) isthe round spot on the retina formed by the passage of the axons of the retinal ganglion cells, which transfer signals from the photoreceptors of the eye to the optic nerve, allowing us to see.
The optic nerve enters the back the eye and there’s a blind spot in your field of vision but the brain photoshops it out
Size constancy
Size Constancy is the tendency to perceive an object as being the same size regardless of whether it is close or far away.
Brightness constancy
Brightness constancy isour visual ability to perceive objects as having the same level of brightness even though the level of lighting changes. For example, something white will appear to be the same shade of white no matter how much light it is being exposed to - noontime sunlight or a soft lamplight at night.
Color constancy
Color constancy refers toour ability to perceive colors as relatively constant over varying illuminations(i.e. light sources). For example, a red apple will still look red on a sunny day or cloudy day – or in a grocery store or a home.
Inattentional blindness
Eg. Gorilla in basketball video. Person focusing on something else will filter out unexpected stimulus in plain sight.
What is the difference between absolute and difference thresholds?
The lowest level of intensity of a specific stimulus that a person may perceive with their senses is known as an absolute threshold. The smallest or smallest difference between stimuli a person can detect is known as a difference threshold.
Cochlea
the spiralcavityof the inner ear containing the organ of Corti, which producesnerveimpulsesin response to soundvibrations.
Air moves down the cochlea and transduction occurs. (Hair?) Cells wiggle and release neurotransmitters.
Ossicles
Bones in the ear. The function of the auditory ossicles isto transfer and amplify air vibrations into the inner ear to be processed as sound. Sound waves travel through the air to the external auditory canal, causing the eardrum to vibrate.
Tympanic membrane
The tympanic membrane has a rather simple function,sound transmission, and amplification. Similar to the membrane on a drum, the tympanic membrane vibrates as it encounters sound “stops the qtip”
What are the 4 types of well established taste receptors? What are 2 more controversial ones?
Sweet, sour, bitter, salty
Umami / fat content
What role does the limbic system play in smell processing?
When you smell a scent, it travels from the olfactory bulb to the limbic system in our brains where memories and emotions are sorted, processed.
All senses go thru the thalamus, except smell. Smell goes to the limbic system first.
Meissner’s corpuscles
Pressure and low frequency vibrations
Pacinian corpuscles
Higher frequency vibrations. Transient pressure like sitting down. Responds to changes in pressure
Merkel’s disks
Light pressure…tickling
Ruffini corpuscles
Stretching
Free nerve endings
Temperature and pain reception
What is gate control theory of pain
The gate opens when you feel pain and allows signal to reach brain. Any other touch(tickle/stretching) closes the gate. Blocks signal. So if you hit your elbow then rub it, youre closing the gate
What is phantom pain
Even tho you could be missing a limb, that part of the brain still exists, so the brain is trying to reorganize and sometimes still firing off the part that corresponds to painful stimuli.
Mirror therapy for missing limbs, tricks the brain into thinking the limb is still there
Loudness physical property
Peak and trough
Pitch physical property
Is the frequency how or slow and long the wavelengths are
Timbre physical property
Saturation. Frequency bandwidth. Differentiates voices even if 3 ppl are singing at same loudness and pitch
Sensory adaption
Senses fades or disappears. We adapt to consistent stimuli or predictable stimuli (like a ceiling fan) the feeling of clothes,material on seat when sitting. You block these senses and adapt to them. Consistent unchanging stimuli fades/disappears
Our nervous system is built to filter out consistent stuff and hone in on changing dynamic stuff. (Evolutionary level)
Brightness
Amplitude (up and down)
Hue
Wavelengths.
Red is longest wave and low frequency stimulus.
Then in order of rainbow..orange, yellow, green, blue. Blue being high frequency stimulus with shortest and sharpest Wavelength.
Saturation
How pure, single frequency (like a lazer), mixing more frequencies into that light and you get lower saturation. Higher bandwidth means more colors =white light.
Narrow bandwidth =1 frequency.
All colors combined =white
Retina
The retinacaptures the light that enters your eye and helps translate it into the images you see. Light passes through the lens at the front of your eye and hits the retina. Photoreceptors — cells inside your retina that react to light — change light energy into an electrical signal.
Trichromatic theory of vision
Total color blindness is rare, just light and dark. No cones work.
Everything is else is color deficiency.
Opponent process theory of vision and negative afterimages
Neurons see certain colors (blue) and get excited. When we see yellow the neuron is subdued (inhibited) this is opponent process cells.
Some colors shouldn’t be seen simultaneously, like blue and yellow, the same neuron can’t fire and not fire simultaneously.
Negative after images are like pinching off a hose then releasing it.if you inhibit a neuron it’s the same thing when you stop suppressing it there will be a rebound effect. If you stare at yellow and it’s inhibited, then turn yellow light off the rebound will fire and you’ll see blue hallucination
Color does not exist
It’s a symbolic representation of electro magnetic frequency energies of light in the world around us.
The visual system is not passive
It’s ACTIVE. Taking a pic the camera just detects light, that is a passive eg.
Your vision does not passively record, eg it fills in your eyes blind spot
A stimulus reaches a physiological threshold when it is strong enough to excite sensory receptors and send nerve impulses to the brain
This is an absolute threshold
Binocular cue
Convergence- eyes can tell distance from the angle they’re at
Retinal disparity- each eye has a different line of sight, closing each eye makes close things hop back and forth, but that won’t work on far things like the moon.. things that are closer have larger retinal disparity.
Uses both eyes to perceive depth.
Monocular depth cue
Interposition- (the mixed up horse and tree pic)
Linear perspective (2 trains tracks converge to a point in the distance.
Uses 1 eye to judge depth
Feature detector cells
These special cells highlight edges and boundaries of everything in your vision field. The very first point of processing is drawing and tracinf outlines of whatever you see.
Fusiform face area
If you see someone you recognize there’s a chain reaction of visual processing that ends at the face module that lights up to features you know.
It also lights up for hobbies. See page 12 notes.
How do cochlear implants work?
A cochlear implantreceives sound from the outside environment, processes it, and sends small electric currents near the auditory nerve. These electric currents activate the nerve, which then sends a signal to the brain. The brain learns to recognize this signal and the person experiences this as “hearing”.
Taste buds vs taste receptors
Taste buds are clusters of taste receptor cells which are also knows as gustatory cells. Taste receptors are located in throat, lungs, cheeks and other areas.
What is the placebo effect
The placebo effect is a phenomenon in which the body starts to heal even if it only thinks it is receiving treatment.
Conditioned vs unconditioned response
A conditioned response is a learned response.
An unconditioned response is a natural response
What would the tuning fork be in Pavlovs dog experiment?
Neutral stimulus at first, then a conditioned stimulus (after conditioning)
In Pavlov dog. What would the food be?
The food is the unconditioned stimulus, conditioned stimulus would be the tuning fork (after conditioning).
Extinction in classical conditioning vs operant conditioning
Classical- if pairings are not short/immediate, extinction could happen. Unlearned. Association disintegration.
Operant extinction happened when you stop reinforcing a behavior. Cessation of reinforcement.
The story of little Albert’s fear of rabbits and how they unraveled his phobia with jellybeans is called what?
Counter conditioning
What is a bridge
A visual cue used as reinforcement (for a requested behavior) with is later followed with a primary reinforcement (fish)
Primary reinforcers
Innate unconditional reinforders, like food, sex, warmth, comfort. Primary reinforcers are inherently reinforcing, we don’t have to learn that it’s reinforcing, they fill a biological need. Or something to survive.
Positive reinforcement
Giving fish, Giving an A.
“Adding something to the situation “
Negative reinforcement
Taking something “away” from the situation, and you’re glad I did. Eg “no more homework!” As a reward.
Or an annoying seat belt chime.
Positive punishment
Adding something and you DON’T want it to be added..eg Pain, being spanked, scared
Negative punishment
Taking things away, eg. Tv or phone privileges
Downside of punishment
Inappropriate use (eg putting out trash…no reinforcement when you remembered but punishment when you forgot)
Harshness and frequency- we overdo punishment because it comes from anger and frustration.
Temporary effect- cops only punish bad driving so if no cop present, you’ll speed.
Immediacy- if a dog tears your couch up at 9am and you get home at 5 and punishment the dog, he doesn’t know why.
Punishment has to immediately follow the behavior.
Lack of information
Punishment only tells you what not to do
Punishment removes 1 behavior out of millions of behaviors, reinforcement reinforces the exact correct behavior out of all millions of behaviors
Shaping
It is used to train a behavior and it works by breaking down the wanted behavior into smaller increments.
Extinction burst
To extinguish a behavior, sometimes we don’t need punishment, we just need absence of reinforcement- cessation of reinforcement.
With that, the subject will sometimes panic and continue the behavior more aggressively. This is an extinction burst.
Higher order conditioning
Adding an extra element such as “who’s a good boy?”, then the tuning fork, salivate, but no food.
Now the dog will salivate with no food or tuning fork, just the prompt “who’s who’s good boy”
Gestalt psychology
Field of psychology based on the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts
Self reference effect
When we relate info to ourselves to remember it. E.g. remembering people’s birthdays that are in the same month as yourself.
Procedural memory
Implicit memory, eg. Walking upstairs or throwing a ball. Non conscious process.
Declarative memory
Explicit memory..semantic, eg if someone asks what a phone is you can explain and give a definition of what a phone is and does.
Semantic memory
a type of long-term memory involving the capacity to recall words, concepts, or numbers, which is essential for the use and understanding of language.
“if patients lose semantic memory, they struggle with knowledge of everyday objects in the world, and have trouble communicating”
arecollectionof a word, concept, or number.
“the extraction of semantic memories and associated emotions”
Rehearsal
Repeating info over and over until the info is processed and stored as a memory
Episodic memory
Autobiographical memory. Declarative. Conscious access.
Recall and recognition
Both explicit. Recall-asking someone to remember something from scratch. Eg ..names of classmates in hs
Recognition- eg multiple choice exam. Giving prompts. Eg. Showing a yearbook and now you remember more classmates from hs
Relearning
Learning, then forgetting and then learning again. Implicit.
Learning faster the 2nd time because somewhere you retained a bit of it
Flash bulb memory
9/11, jfk, these memories are desired into your brain from the strong emotions. You can probably recall the whole day.
Retrograde amnesia
You forget your whole past but can make new memories
Anterograde amnesia
You remember your past but can’t make new memories. If cerebellum is intact, maybe you can make implicit memories like tying a shoe
Confabulation
Believing someone else’s memory is actually your own due to realistic details, rehearsing an imagined event, familiar setting, easily imagined
Automatic vs effortful processing
Automatic is usually outside conscious awareness, eg remembering what you had for lunch. Sensory.
Effortful- memorizing conscious intention. More complex. Eg. Studying for midterm
Role schema
What we use to describe categories in our minds.. makes processes faster…eg role schema,, A stereotype.
A downside or limitation- Racism
Schema is a cognitive shortcut but can oversimplify things and isn’t flexible.
Event schema
Is a cognitive script.
Certain situations or events that lead to a sequence of behaviors you don’t think twice about doing…eg..answering a phone.
Initial stimulus (phone ringing) causes a chain of behaviors that are 2nd nature. Event schemas are hard to break (eg trying NOT to answer your phone while driving) and anxiety happens because you can’t answer it like normal
Syntax
Rules for sentences
Semantics
Are the meaning of individual words
Overgeneralization
When you overextend a grammatical rule.
Eg. Kids grasping language will say “runned” instead of ran because they know adding an “ed” is usually for past tense words.
Functional fixedness
Functional fixedness is a cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used. The concept of functional fixedness originated in Gestalt psychology, a movement in psychology that emphasizes holistic processing
Availability heuristic
To overestimate the likelihood of events that are unlikely to happen just because they are easy to picture. Especially if there is a present or recent example.
Eg- like a plane crash
Hindsight bias
Belief that a previous event was predictable. Forgetting the uncertainty of the moment.
We tend to forget that info was not available to us in the moment and you could not have predicted it.
Fairness bias
Bias is a component of fairness—if a test is statistically biased, it is not possible for the testing process to be fair. However, a testing process can still be unfair even if there is no statistical bias present.
Eg. The ultimatum game dividing $20 or the
Capuchin monkeys cucumber or melon. Which may be evolutionary.
“Forego small amount today in hopes for a better deal tomorrow”
This is hardwired into our brains
The framing effect
Highlighting risk vs gain
Eg. If you tell someone a surgery is 90% effective they will respond positively.
If you instead say “10% of these surgeries fail” ppl will think twice. The statics are the same. It’s how a situation us framed to get a reaction.
Psychomentrics
The measurement of psychological phenomena, so eg measuring intelligence.
Eg…standardized tests like sat or iq
Brain vs bodyweight
the science of measuring mentalcapacitiesand processes.
Engram
An engram is a physical foundational network that creates the memory of seeing a face you recognize or a song lyric
Made of clusters of neurons
Engram. Definition:the physical changes in the brain associated with a memoryit is also known as the memory trace.
How is memory a reconstructive process?
The reconstructive memory psychology definition includesmemories that add details not part of the actual event or omit details that were. An individual’s life experiences can shape and change memory and alter its content. Most research suggests that the majority of all memories are reconstructed memories
Stimulus generalization classical condit.
Stimulus generalization occurs when a stimulus that is similar to an already-conditioned stimulus begins to produce the same response as the original stimulus does. Stimulus discrimination occurs when the organism learns to differentiate between the CS and other similar stimuli.
Stimulus generalization in classical and operant
Stimulus generalization can occur in operant and classical conditioning. It occurs in classical conditioning when someone responds to stimuli that are similar to the original conditioned stimulus (eg, when a dog drools for any pitch of tuning fork). It occurs in operant conditioning when a learned behavior is applied to another similar context (eg when a sea lion responds to any circle shape regardless of color) Feb 11, 2022
Classical conditioning and food phobia or aversions
One bad experience with a food can cause an aversion that lasts for days or years
Bridge
Animal trainerswill often create a special secondary reinforcer they call a bridge. A bridge isa stimulus that has been associated with a primary reinforcer through classical conditioning. This process creates a conditioned positive reinforcer, often called a conditioned reinforcer or CR for short.
bridge”, as it is often called, (often a clicker, whistle or word)communicates to the subject that it has performed correctly and signals that additional reinforcement is on the way. It “bridges” the gap between the time the correct response is given and the time the reinforcer is delivered.
Difference between binocular and monocular depth cues
Binocular depth cues involve the use of two eyes working together in order to provide the brain with information about depth and distance. Monocular depth cues requires the use of only one eye to provide information to the brain about depth and distance.
