Study Guide Flashcards
What components are necessary to define consciousness?
Awareness and arousal
What area of the brain is involved in awareness?
The prefrontal cortex, Anterior cingulate, association areas
What produces altered states of consciousness?
Drugs, Fatigue, Illness, Trama, Deprivation, Meditation, and Hypnosis
What are circadian rhythms responsible for?
Controls psychological cycles such as sleep/wake, body temp, and blood pressure/sugar
What are the effects of sleep deprivation?
Decreases alertness and cognitive performance, inability to sustain attention, less complex brain activity, adverse effects on decision making, can influence moral judgment, and decrease memory performance
What stage of sleep is categorized by rapid eye movement and what occurs in this stage?
Stage 5 - Rem sleep; when dreaming occurs
Insomnia
habitual sleeplessness; inability to sleep.
Narcolepsy
Uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep
Sleep Apnea
Individuals stop breathing and awaken to breath better
Night Terrors
Sudden arousal from sleep intense fear that typically occurs during non-rem sleep
What do tolerance, withdrawal, and dependence mean?
Tolerance - Increasing amounts for the same effect
Withdrawal - Negative effects due to non-consumption
Dependence - A need or strong desire for
What is the difference between depressants and stimulants?
Depressants decrease brain activity
Stimulants increase brain activity
What are the effects of alcohol?
Slows down mental and physical activity; medical use is pain relief; the short term effects are relaxation and reduced inhibition, overdose can lead to disorientation and death.
What stimulant(s) are the most widely used?
Caffeine
What do meditation and hypnosis entail and what are the effects?
Hypnosis is marked by altered attention and expectation and unusual receptiveness to suggestions
Meditation is a peaceful state of mind not occupied by worry
What is behaviorism?
Theory of learning that focuses solely on observational behaviors
What type of learning is associated with classical, operant, and observational learning?
Associative learning
What is the result of classical conditioning?
To get a conditioned response from a conditioned stimulus
What is an innate stimulus-response connection?
A subconscious action due to a stimulus
What is generalization?
Responding to stimuli similar to the conditioned stimulus
What is extinction and what does it entail?
Behavior decreases when stimulation stops.
In operant conditioning what causes a change?
The timing of consequences
What is shaping?
Reinforcement is given for progressively closer approximations of the desired target behavior.
What is reinforcement and the different types of reinforcement?
A behavior followed by a rewarding consequence
Positive and Negative
What is the difference between reinforcement and punishment?
Reinforcement is followed by a positive consequence.
Punishment is followed by an adverse consequence
What are the primary and secondary reinforcers?
Primary reinforcers are innately satisfying
Secondary reinforcers become satisfying through experience.
What are Bandura’s four primary processes in observational learning?
Attention, Retention, Motor Reproduction, and Reinforcement
Which of Bandura’s processes determines if an Imitated or modeled act will be repeated?
Reinforcement
What is latent learning?
A type of learning that occurs without reinforcement.
What is memory?
The retention of knowledge or experience
What is encoding?
The ability to store something in one’s memory
What is the dual-code hypothesis?
Images are stored in verbal code and image code
How long does information last in sensory memory, long term memory, and working memory?
Sensory Memory - Very Brief
Long Term - Relatively Permanent
Working Memory - 10 - 15 Seconds
What makes up memory storage according to the Atkinson-Shiffrin Theory of Memory?
Sensory memory, central executive, phonological loop, visual spacial sketch pad, and long term memory
What is the difference between echoic and iconic memory?
Iconic refers to visual memory while echoic refers to auditory memory.
What is chunking?
Grouping items into a unit
Episodic and semantic memory are subsections of what type of memory?
Explicit memory
What is the difference between declarative and nondeclarative memory
Declarative memory allows us to consciously recollect events and facts. Nondeclarative memory is accessed without consciousness or implicitly through performance rather than recollection.
What is long term potentiation?
The ability to commit information to long-term memory
What is retrieval?
The ability to recall stored information
What are the primacy and recency effects?
The brain’s ability to remember the first part and the last part of a list with more clarity than the middle part of the list.
What is the difference between recognition and recall?
Recall is your brain’s ability to retrieve information from your memories.
Recognition is your brain’s ability to recall memories based on familiar images.
Why do people repress memories?
Because they tend to be painful, stressful, or traumatic in nature.
What happens when an encoding failure occurs?
Your brain fails to create a memory link
What is the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia?
Retrograde amnesia is a loss of memories that have been already formed, while anterograde amnesia is an inability to form new memories
What phrase best describes memory and aging?
Decay Theory
What is Cognitive Psychology?
Approaches seeking to explain observable behavior by investigating mental processes and structures that can not be directly observed.
What are concepts?
Mental categories used to group objectives, events, and characteristics.
What are the steps to problem-solving and what does each step entail?
- Find and frame the problem
- Develope good problem-solving strategies that may involve sub goals, algorithms, and heuristics
- Evaluate solutions, determine the effectiveness of the solution.
- Rethink and redefine problems and solutions over time.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using algorithms?
Advantages:
Strategies that guarantee solutions to problems.
Disadvantages:
Problem is that solutions may take a long time
What is confirmation bias?
Search only for info that supports your ideas
What is the availability heuristic?
Predict probability based on ease of recall
What is mindfulness and what does it involve?
Being alert and mentally present for everyday activities
What is brain-storming and what type of thinking is it?
Group discussion to produce ideas or solve problems. Divergent thinking
What is the definition of intelligence for the U.S.?
The all-purpose ability to do well on cognitive tests, to solve problems, and to learn from experience.
What is mental retardation, particularly what are the intelligence factors involved in intelligence?
It is defined as having an IQ of lower than 70.
Factors:
Low adaptive function for conceptual, social, and practical problems.
What are Semantics?
Meanings of words and sentences
What is phonology?
Basic phonemes (sounds)
What does the fact that children learn languages at the same time indicate?
That learning language is prewired into the brain.
