Review from Book: Mod 6, 17-19, 23-24 Flashcards
What are the association areas?
Areas of cortex involved in higher mental functions - learning, speech, memory.
What is neuroplasticity?
The brain’s ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience
What is neurogenesis?
The formation of new neurons
What are bottom-up and top-down processing?
Bottom-up: What am I seeing?
Taking sensory information and then assembling and integrating it - data driven
Top-down: Is this something I’ve seen before?
Using models, ideas, and expectations to interpret sensory information - background knowledge influences perception
What is transduction?
conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret
What is the absolute threshold?
the minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time
What is Weber’s law?
two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum PERCENTAGE (rather than a constant amount) to a just noticeable difference
ex: shout in loud room
whisper in quiet room
What is sensory adaptation?
decreased sensitivity from constant stimulation
What is accommodation?
the eye’s lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina
What is the blind spot?
where the optic nerve leaves the eye, no receptor cells creates a “blind spot”
What is the Phi Phenomenon?
an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession
What are frequency and pitch?
Frequency - the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time
Pitch - a tone’s experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency
What is gate control theory?
Spinal cord has “gate” that blocks or passes pain signals to the brain
What is kinesthesia?
our movement sense—our system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts
What is parallel processing?
processing many aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously
What is automatic processing?
unconscious encoding of:
incidental information - space, time, and frequency,
familiar information - sounds, smells, and word meanings
What is the spacing effect?
You retain more with spaced out study sessions rather than a mass study session - go figure.
the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice
What is the testing effect?
enhanced memory after retrieving information, rather than simply rereading
What is a flashbulb memory?
a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event
What is long term potentiation?
an increase in a nerve cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory
What is priming?
exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD
eg.) word association
What is the serial position effect?
our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list
