Psych Exam 2 Flashcards
perceptual constancy.
we percieve things to be constant and unchanging. think of a blue ball that moves into the shade.
weber’s law
just noticiable difference must be a percentage change
proactive interference
When you are trying to retreive soemthign but there are other things that are similar to that of which you want to retrieve. think of accidentally writing down your childhood address instead of current one
retroactive interference
harder to remember things of the past because the new things are closer and easier to remember
sleep disorders happen in which stage?
N3
Sensation
The process of sensory receptors and nervous system receiving information from the environment
Perception
Organizing and interpreting sensory info and allowing us to recognize meaningful things.
Bottom- up processing
Begins with sensory receptors and goes to the brain to be processed
Top down processing
How we interpret and our perception (specifically around sensory information)
Top down processing
How we interpret and our perception (specifically around sensory information)
Transduction: Visual
Stimulus input: light…Travels in waves
Wavelength (visual)
Distance from one wave peak to another
Influences hue
Amplitude (visual)
Height of the wave
Influences brightness (small= dull and large = bright)
Garcia Affect
the fact that we are more likely to associate illness with food, showing evolutionary tendencies to form certain associations effect
Transduction: auditory
Sound travels in waves
Wavelength= frequency
Frequency determines pitch
Transduction:pain
nociceptors. These don’t respond to one single stimulus, but everything that could cause damage
Transduction: Touch
Sense of touch is actually a mix of four distinct skin senses
Pressure
Warmth
Cold
Pressure
Other sensations are variations of the basic four. (for example, cold and pressure is the sensation of wet)
Transduction: taste
Each taste bud has 50-100 taste receptors
They respond to specific molecules to create flavors
Taste can be influenced by learning, expectations, cognitions, and perceptual bias (think of how kids like food that’s their fav color more. Or if you put a fancy label on cheap wine then people think it tastes better)
Transduction: smell
20 million olfactory receptors in the nose
Respond to different molecules
Signals go to the olfactory bulb in the brain
Bypass the thalamus
Just Noticeable Difference
The smallest (minimum) DIFFERENCE between two things that make you feel it 50% of the time.
Absolute threshold
The smallest (minimum) intensity of something that makes you feel it 50% of the time.
Do perceptual sets influence bottom-up or top-down processing?
Top-down
What are perceptual sets
Perceptual sets are the expectations or schemas that we already have that affect how we perceive something.
How can context influence how we interpret sensations?
Determines what you expect to happen. Our perceptions change based on the context of our situation or current environment. Think of someone who feels in danger- they might expect that someone reaching into their bag has a weapon.
How does amplitude play a role in auditory perception
Amplitude is the height of the wave. It influences volume.
How does amplitude play a role in visual perception
Brightness. (Small= dull; large = bright)
How does wavelength play a role in auditory perception
Pitch. Closer = higher pitch
How does wavelength play a role in visual perception
Influences hue (close=blue and far=red)
Rods
Location: outer region of retina (peripheral vision)
Responds to shapes/motion and light and dark sensitivity
Vague details
Cones
location: center of retina (fovea)
Individual connections to brain
Processes color and details
Binocular cues
Two eyes improve depth perception to about 10-12 feet. Brain calculates distance by comparing images from the two eyes. Used in 3D movies.
Monocular cues
Depth perception of each eye alone. Light and shadow, relative motion, relative size.
Monocular cues
Depth perception of each eye alone. Light and shadow, relative motion, relative size.
Make sure you understand perceptual constancy and could describe the role of both top-down and bottom-up processing as it relates to perceptual constancy.
We perceive things as consisten and unchanging. This uses top down processing to perceive it, but we use bottom up processing to take in the sensory information in the first place. We perceive things far away as the same size when they are closer, even though they LOOK different. We have taken bottom up processing and looked at the cues around something to make sense of it in the top down processing. Same goes for things when they change angles, or shadows and colors and stuff.
What determines the perceived loudness of auditory stimuli?
the bending of the hairs
What factors may influence how much pain we feel?
If we are thinking about the pain, it feels more intense. If we have memories of the pain, we are usually remembering the worst moments. We also tend to experience more pain when others seem to be experiencing it too.
What does the McGurk Effect demonstrate generally about how we perceive stimuli?
We perceive stimuli based on multiple senses at one. Think of the video saying ba vs va vs dah (top down processing)
What are the five tastes and how might they have been evolutionarily useful
Sweet: energy
Sour: toxic acid
Salty: sodium essential
Bitter: poison
Umami: proteins to help grow and repair
How can environmental exposure relate to the evolutionary context of taste?
Repeated exposure helps you learn to enjoy a taste or not think of it as dangerous. Its influenced by learning and expectations. (think of kids who like food that are their fav color better)
What is synesthesia
Belding sensory info. Caused by cross activation of brain areas. Runs in family.
System 1 processing
Unconscious. Automatic, implicit, fast, biased
System 2 processing
Conscious. Controlled. Explicit. Slow. objective
What is blindsight and how does it demonstrate system 1 and
The condition when a person can respond to a stimuli without conscious experience. (ex: someone who is blindsight can walk down cluttered hallways even though they cant consciously see the things in the way.
Priming:
to activate schemas
Using schemas as the independent variable. Use of subtle subliminal cues
Experimenter manipulated
Predictor measured
Creating accessibility
IAT:
The test using flowers and bugs vs good and bad. Quick reactions but conflicting info. Looks at the strengths of this correlation.
Inattentialional blindness
Failure to see visible objects when attention is directed elsewhere
Change blindness
Failure to notice changes in the environment, a form of inattentional blindness
What is the role of selective attention in these processes?
You are focusing consciou awareness on a particular stimulus but blocking out others.
What is the importance of the cocktail party effect when it comes to unconscious perceptions?
You are uncosnciously listening for important info (such as hearing your name)
Generally, what are some of the most important reasons for sleep?
Recuperation, rebuilding of memory, problem solving, growth.
What is our circadian rhythm?
Internal biological clock of 24 hour cyle of the day and night. Body temp rises as morning comes and lowers as night comes.
What is the relationship between our real world experiences and our dreams?
Incorporates days events. Usually processing and encoding into memory?
How are we affected by sleep deprivation?
Cognitive effects- Decreased focus and issues with attention
Fatigue and irritability. Impaired concentration, productivity, and memory consolidation
Can lead to depression, joint pain, a suppressed immune system, and slowed performance with a greater vulnerability to accidents
Driving performance- 24 straight hours awake = (roughly) BAC of .10 (this is illegal to drive with)
Recall
Retreiving information that is not currently in your conscious awareness but that was learned at an earlier time
Regogntition
Identifying items previously learned when they are presented to your conscious awareness
Explicit memory
Declarative memories of conscious facts and experiences encoded through conscious effortful processing. Eventually explicit memories can become automatically processed
Implicit memory
Nondeclarative memories that form through automatic processes and bypass the conscious encoding track (ex: time, space, etc.)
What is sensory memory
The perception of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch information
Unaltered, outside awareness, fleeting
how is information brought from sensory memory to short term memory?
Attention.
Iconic memory
About 1/2 a second
Perceive changes and consistencies in visual information (e.g. movies)
Echoic memory
As long as 4-10 seconds
Allows us to perceive and process language, localize sounds
What is the “magical number” of items that can be held in short-term memory?
7 digits, 6 letters, or 5 words
How long does short term memory last? What is the role of rehearsal in this?
9-15 seconds
Mnemonic devices
Vivid imagery/organizational devices
Acronyms/rhyming/songs
Method of Loci
Method of Loci
Take a room you are familiar with and imagine yourself walking through it in a systematic order. Then you take the things you need to remember and visually put them in places around your house (ex. Put the potato on the pillow). Then when grocery shopping you’ll go around your room in your mind and see each thing where you put it.
Chunking
Organizing into familiar manageable units
Hierarchies
Organization of items into a few broad categories that are divided and subdivided into narrower concepts and facts
Might elicit false memories (ex: when we tried to say the 7 dwarves and multiple people invented a dwarf)
Distributed practice
Helpful for studying. Spacing effect and testing effect
Spacing effect
Cramming= increased confidence even though they tend to perform worse
Distributing over time= better memory
Testing effect
Repeated testing is best for long term recall/stress
Shallow encoding
Encoded by the way it sounds or looks
deep encoding
Encoded through analysis. (previous ideas, making connections, etc)
Self referential encoding
Encoding in relation to yourself (does it apply to YOU?)
How long does long-term memory last?
Years. Could even be a lifetime.
What is the process of pulling memories from long-term storage into our conscious focus called?
Retrieval
Stages of memory
Attention
- selects information from sensory memory into short term memory
Encoding
- sends info to long term store from short term memory
Retrieval
- brings information from LTM to working memory
Rehearsal
- maintains information in working memory
Semantic memory
Explicit memory of facts and general knowledge; not necessarily the origins of the knowledge
Episodic memories
explicit memory of personally experienced events; ability to “replay things”
Primacy effect
You remember the first piece of info longer
Recency effect
You remember the last bit of info best
Context-dependent memory
More likely to have a better memory for something if retrieval occurs in a similar context to when the information was learned.
Specific to external contexts.
Mood congruent memories
More likely to remember events consistent with current mood.
Ex: sad= my parents were bad.
Ex: Happy= my parents were great.
How can forgetting happen at sensory memory
Senses only momentarily register. attention isnt placed on it?
How can forgetting happen at short term memory
Only a few items are noticed and encoded. Here forgetting is failure to encode
How can forgetting happen at long term storage
Some items are altered or lost
How can forgetting happen at retrieval from long term memory
Some things dont get retrieved (this could even just be because right cues arent there)
Anterograde amnesia
Inability to form new memories (this can be temporary)
Retrograde amnesia
Inability to retrieve information from one’s past
Misinformation effect
A memory is corrupted by misleading information
Reconsolidation
when previously stored memories are retrieved, and then potentially altered before being stored again
Context of retrieval influences how we think about the memory and how we store it
Imagination effect
repeatedly imagining fake actions and events can create false memories
influence reconsolidation
Phrasing of questions can influence memory retrieval
Source amnesia
Faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagine
Helps explain déjà vu
Eyewitness memories can be unreliable (unless witness knows person)
Especially cross-racial eyewitness identification
Most vases that have been overturned relied on eyewitnesses
376 exonerations 22,000 years in prison saved
3,690 years wrongfully served
75% were mistaken eye-witness identification
associative learning?
Learning that certain events occur together
Unconditioned stimulus:
something that automatically evokes a response ( food is presented)
Unconditioned Response
the response that is elicited from the US with no conditioning (emotion, feeling, reflex, etc.) (dog salivation)
Neutral stimulus
a stimulus that elicits no response prior to conditioning (no salivation to bell)
Conditioned stimulus
the NS is paired with the US enough that in now triggers the response. It is ONLY the conditioned response if it elicits the response without the US present (Bell but NO food)
Conditioned response:
conditioned response to the original NS. Only is the conditioned response if it occurs with only the CS. Usually the same as the UR but with a different trigger (sometimes it can be a desire or a craving for the UR) (salivating to the bell without the food)
What is higher order conditioning?
A procedure in which the conditioned stimulus in one conditioning experience is paired with a new neutral stimulus, creating a second (often weaker) conditioned stimulus
An animal that has learned that a tone predicts food might then learn that a light predicts the tone and begin responding to the light alone
Extinction
Presentation of the CS without the UCS eventually leads to a weakened CR
Spontaneous recovery
Allowing time to pass prior to presenting the CS again following the extinction
You then see the Conditioned Response return
Generalization
Following conditioning, stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus may elicit a similar response
Pavlov conditioned a dog to respond to a shock on the thigh. The closer a stimulated spot was to the dog’s thigh, the stronger to conditioned response was
Example: think about how different, but similar alarms to the one you use make you react.
Discrimination
Learned ability to distinguish between a conditioned stimulus (which predicts the US) and other irrelevant stimuli
Usually takes time to learn to distinguish between things
Positive reinforcement
add or increase a pleasant stimulus
Negative reinforcement
reduce or remove and unpleasant stimulus
Positive punishment-
present or add an unpleasant stimulus
Negative punishment-
Reduce or remove a pleasant stimulus
Primary
An innate reinforcer, satisfies biological needs (water, food etc)
Secondary/conditional reinforcement
Stimulus gains reinforcing power through its association with primary reinforcer
Ex: money
fixed interval
“every response after X minutes/seconds/days…etc.”
Ex: paychecks, employee of the month
Variable interval
“every response after a random amount of time”
This is less quick as variable ratio
Ex: checking emails, social media, etc.
Fixed ratio
coffee house punch card
Variable ratio
slot machines
Ratio
Reinforcement proportional to the number of responses
Induced rapid responses
Interval
First response after a set amount of time is rewarded
Reinforcement set by the clock
Induces relatively low response rates compared to ratio
Shaping
Reward things as you get closer to the desired behavior
Successive approximations to the desired response are reinforced
Playing “hot” and “cold”
Used to condition more complex behaviors or one that are far from initial behaviors
Classical conditioning
Involuntary response with a stimulus
Operant conditioning
We learn to associate certain behaviors with certain consequences
Voluntary response with consequence
Based on conscious choices, not reflexes
How does latent learning challenge the behaviorist perspective on learning?
Latent learning is learning that occurred even though there was no reward present
The behaviorist perspective on learning is that people learn from outside environments. Latent learning shows that there is thought process and motivation and human behavior occurring inside, not just externally.
What about intrinsic motivation?
Doing something for satisfaction instead of external rewards. This is the same- behvaiorists said that you are built and learn on external situations, but this is internal
What about the discussion of cult membership?
Shows that people don’t want to look silly. They believed even more because they didnt want to think they were wrong
What was the evidence from the bobo doll study and how did it support modeling?
People who saw aggressive behavior were even more aggressive. They picked up the toy gun that the person in the video didnt even touch.
What is the role of mirror neurons?
Watching someone else get a reward, lit up reward center of someone else’s brain in the fMRI (though a smaller amount) (mirror neurons)
What is a prototype?
Mental image or best example of a category- based on schemas. We more quickly identify things as belonging to a category if they are closer to the prototype
Example: crow is classified as a bird faster than a penguin is
Problem solving through algorithm
methodical, logical rule, or procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem.
Example: trying every possible combination of a safe
Problem solving heuristic
a simpler strategy that is usually speeder than an algorithm but is also more error prone (relies on schemas
Example: using the persons b-day or other things
What is insight?
is not a strategy based solution, but rather a sudden flash of inspiration that solves a problem.
Example: realizing suddenly the punchline or a joke or solution to a riddle
Representative heuristic
Estimating the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; it may lead us to ignore other relevant information
Often leads individuals to ignore base rates (and also unfair stereotyping)
Availability heuristic
Estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common.
Ex: concern for global warming is higher on warm days and lower on cold days
Fixation
the inability to see a problem from a new perspective
May prevent us from taking the fresh perspective that would lead to a solution
Functional fixedness is the tendency to view an object as having one function.
Mental set: approach a new problem in one particular way, that has worked in the past.
Framing affect
sways decisions and judgments by influencing the way an issue is posed.
Example: Calling something a “Rebate” vs. “bonus” on the spending of money.
What is the usefulness of intuition?
Intuition is analysis “frozen into habit”
Intuition is implicit knowledge.
Example: quick reactions of nurses and doctors
Intuition is usually adaptive, enabling quick reactions
Learned associations surface as “gut” feelings
Often intuitive decisions result in similar satisfaction to long thought out ones- they are quicker and more efficient
What is divergent thinking?
Expands the number of possible problem solutions
What evidence to bilingual speakers provide for Whorf’s hypothesis of linguistic determinism?
You think differently in different languages. Might change languages to express different emotions. Being bilingual enhances social skills.
How do common grammar mistakes by children demonstrate some of Noam Chomsky’s principles of language development?
We are born wanting to understand grammar rules. This is why a lot of times when words don’t follow the rules, children will still use the rule on them because they are trying to follow grammar rules.
Does the development of understanding of language happen at the same rate as production of language?
No. Children are able to understand around 4 months but aren’t able to produce words until around 10 months
What evidence is presented in class that there is a critical period for language learning?
Immigrants and the girl, genie, who didn’t learn to talk when she was young.
Brocas
controls language expression. Directs the muscle movements involved in speech. Aphasia is when this doesnt work
Wernickes aphasia
controls language understanding- a brain area involved in language comprehension and expression (you can speak but it won’t always make sense)
