PSYC 100 Midterm: Ch. 10-11

Question 1

Sensory interaction

Answer 1

he working together of different senses to create experience
Involves the automatic operation of a variety of essential perceptual processes (ex. eating)

Question 2

Selective attention

Answer 2

the ability to focus on some sensory inputs while tuning out others

Question 3

Cocktail Party Phenomenon

Answer 3

the experience of being at a party and talking to someone in one part of the room, when you hear your name mentioned in another part of the room

Question 4

Perceptual constancy

Answer 4

the ability to perceive a stimulus as constant despite changes in sensation (a door swinging)

Question 5

Sensory adaptation

Answer 5

a decreased sensitivity of a receptor of a stimulus after constant stimulation

Question 6

Dichotic listening

Answer 6

experimental task in which two messages are presented to different ears

Question 7

Shadowing

Answer 7

a task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it’s presented

Question 7

Broadbent’s Filter Model

Answer 7

Model of Selective Attention - people select information on the basis of physical features: the sensory channel that a message was coming in, the pitch of the voice, the color or font of a visual message; argued that selection occurs very early, with no additional processing for the unselected information

Question 8

Treisman Attenuation Model

Answer 8

switched the stories to the opposite ears and individuals followed - the physical or perceptual level, but that the unattended information is not blocked completely, it is just weakened or attenuated. As a result, pertinent information in the unattended ear will get through the filter for further processing at the level of meaning

Question 9

Late Selection Model

Answer 9

you still process information in unattended ear; consistent with ideas of subliminal perception; in other words, that you don’t have to be aware of or attending a message for it to be fully processed for meaning.

Question 10

Multimode Model

Answer 10

suggesting that the stage at which selection occurs can change depending on the task

Question 11

Divided attention

Answer 11

the ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks

Question 12

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 12

the failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected, object or event when attention is devoted to something else

Question 13

Episodic memory

Answer 13

Explicit memory; ability to learn and retrieve new information or episodes in one’s life (e.g., recollections of high school graduation)

Question 14

Semantic memory

Answer 14

explicit memory; the permanent store of knowledge that people have, refers to facts and concepts about the world

Question 15

Procedural Memory

Answer 15

implicit memory; often unexplained knowledge of how to do things
(e.g., dial a cell phone, play a video game)

Question 16

Priming as Implicit Memory

Answer 16

the activation of certain thoughts or feelings that make them easier to think of and act upon

Question 17

Classical conditioning affects

Answer 17

implicit memory; we learn to associate neutral stimuli with another stimulus, creating a naturally occurring response

Question 18

Short-term memory (STM)

Answer 18

the place where small amounts of information can be temporarily kept for more than a few seconds but usually for less than a minute

Question 19

Working memory

Answer 19

the form of memory we use to hold onto information temporarily, usually for the purposes of manipulation

Question 20

Stages of memory

Answer 20

Encoding, storage, retrieval

Question 21

Strategies to Improve Retention

Answer 21

Consider the meaning of events rather than just the events themselves
Relate new events to those we already know (form associations for retrieval)
Imagine events to make them more memorable (create imagery)
DRM (for Deese-Roediger-McDermott) effect: participants are asked to remember a list of words and then recognize them from a list of other words incorporated

Question 22

Retroactive interference

Answer 22

events that occur after some event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event

Question 23

Proactive Interference

Answer 23

when memories interfere with the encoding of new ones

Question 24

Misinformation Effect

Answer 24

when erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event

Question 25

Encoding specificity principle

Answer 25

retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace (ex. certain emotions being cued will help you remember)

Question 26

Cue Overload Principle

Answer 26

the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory

Question 27

Causes of forgetting

Question 28

Disassociative Amnesia

Answer 28

loss of autobiographical memories from a period in the past in the absence of brain injury or disease (often involves a history of trauma)