Midterm 2 (Ch. 3-5) Flashcards
The attentional focus mechanism suggested by gate control theory relies on the notion of what kind of processing?
Top-down processing
Because the brain cannot process physical stimuli directly, it must convert the stimuli into chemical and electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. This process is known as
Transduction
Precious was woken up in the middle of a dream about dragons shopping for umbrellas while dancing a polka. Precious was most likely experiencing __________ when woken up.
REM sleep
In considering a human characteristic, we could say that the __________ provides the options, and the __________ determines which option is taken.
genome; environment
Another way to think of agonists and antagonists with respect to their involvement in the actions of neurotransmitters is that agonists __________, whereas antagonists __________, the action of specific neurotransmitters.
enhance; impair
Since nicotine increases acetylcholine functioning, we can assume it is a(n)
acetylcholine agonist.
The Thatcher illusion occurs because we normally process faces in a way that is
configural
The Missing Letter Effect reflects the _________of reading, and is ________ correlated with the Stroop Effect.
automaticity; positively
Frank Tong and colleagues superimposed a house onto a face and asked participants to make judgments about what they saw. What were the participants’ brain responses?
The brain activity changed depending on whether participants reported seeing a house or a face.
Sleep spindles indicate which stage of sleep?
stage 2
Which area in the temporal lobe of the brain appears to be specialized for perceiving faces?
fusiform gyrus
If the ventral stream of your visual cortex were not working temporarily, you would be unable to understand ________ an object is; but if your dorsal stream was still functioning, you could understand ________ an object is
what; where
Which of the following can help close the neural gate in the spinal cord?
distraction
Suppose you wish to examine the structure of a person’s brain. Given the choice, you should use
magnetic resonance imaging.
An experimenter gives participants a set of headphones and plays a different story in each ear. Each participant is told to shadow the message in the left ear and to ignore the message in the right ear. The attended story is __________, while the nonattended story is __________.
more likely to be remembered; processed at least to some extent
Why do people report the viral image of “the dress” as different sets of colors?
The light source in the image is ambiguous, so people make different relative judgments of the colors of the dress.
All five sensory systems send information to the brain through the cranial nerves, but one sensory system sends information to the brain through the spinal nerves as well. Which of our sensory systems can also send information to the brain through the spinal nerves?
touch
During the Cold War, the Stroop Effect was an effective counter-espionage tool for the USA because:
Bilingual people can’t ignore the written words in either language.
Manuel is waiting to hear back about a job he interviewed for. Manuel takes a shower while he waits. While he is in the shower, he keeps straining to hear the phone above the noise of the water. Whenever he hears a sound, he thinks it is the phone. Manuel is showing ________, a concept described in ________.
response bias; signal detection theory
People’s sensitivity to unchanging stimuli decreases over time because
unchanging stimuli convey little new information.
A medication that blocks the reuptake of serotonin will lead to
more serotonin in the synapse.
If a key is pressed on a piano, the frequency of the resulting sound waves will determine the ________, and the amplitude will determine the ________ of the perceived musical note.
pitch; loudness
The brain and the spinal cord make up the __________ nervous system.
central nervous system
A myelin sheath is like the
insulation of a wire.
A gene is…
a segment of DNA that is involved in producing proteins that carry out specific tasks.
The base of the cochlea responds to __________ sounds, and the tip of the cochlea responds to __________ sounds.
high-frequency; low-frequency
The thalamus receives nearly all sensory information before relaying it to the cortex. What one sensation is the EXCEPTION to this rule?
smell
One example of an automatic process is
walking
Hormones are to __________ as neurotransmitters are to __________.
the endocrine system; the nervous system
Which theory of sleep would explain why Jon slept an extra 4 hours after running a marathon?
restorative theory
After neurotransmitters have been received by the postsynaptic neuron, which of the following does NOT happen to the remaining neurotransmitter:
Enzyme deactivation
You unexpectedly observe a bright flash of light. Your detection of the light involves
Exogenous attention
Beau’s mother and father each carry a dominant gene for brown eyes and a recessive gene for blue eyes. The probability that Beau’s eyes are blue is
.25
The optic nerve is composed of axons of
ganglion cells
Circadian rhythms can best be described as…
biological clocks controlling hormone levels, temperature, and the sleep cycle.
Sleep deprivation can increase the activation of __________ receptors in the brain, which in turn can alleviate symptoms of __________.
serotonin; depression
The parts of a neuron that receive messages from other neurons are the
dendrites
Which of the following sequences reflects the order in which a signal travels through a neuron?
dendrite –> cell body –> axon –> terminal buttons
Why is REM sleep called paradoxical sleep?
The person is asleep, but the person’s brain is very active.
Which of the following is true about the experience of flow?
People experiencing flow lose track of time and fail to notice other things going on.
Which of the following subcortical structures plays an important role in fear processing?
amygdala
Janice took a stimulant medication called Adderall to help her study. After a few minutes, she noticed that she was sweating, and her heart was racing. These symptoms occurred because of the drug’s effect on Janice’s _______
sympathetic nervous system.
Your friend is taking an over-the-counter medication. He claims that it is not a psychoactive drug, but you claim it is. What characteristic of the drug would most likely support your argument?
The drug activates the brain’s neurotransmitter receptors.
According to trichromatic theory, damage to your S cones would most likely result in which of the following types of color blindness?
blue-yellow
In research on signal detection theory, incorrectly “detecting” a stimulus that was not presented in a trial is called a
false alarm.
