Test 1 Flashcards
Cerebral cortex
The intricate fabric of interconnected neural cells covering the cerebral hemispheres; the bodies ultimate control and information processing center.
Frontal lobes
Portion of the cerebral cortex lying just behind the forehead; involved in speaking and muscle movements and in making plans and judgements.
Parietal lobes
Portion of cerebral cortex lying at the top of the head and toward the rear; receives sensory input for touch and body position.
Occipital lobes
Portion of the cerebral cortex lying at the back of the head, includes areas that receive information from visual fields.
Temporal lobes
Portion of the cerebral cortex lying roughly above the ears; includes the auditory areas, each receiving information primarily from the opposite ear!
Motor cortex
An area at the rear of the frontal lobes that controls voluntary movement. Moving appendages in opposite direction.
Somatosensory cortex
Area at the front of the parietal lobes that registers and processes touch and movement sensation
Association areas
Areas of the cerebral cortex that are not involved in primary motor or sensory functions; rather they are involved in higher mental functions such as learning, remembering, thinking and speaking.
Plasticity
The brains ability to change, especially during childhood, by reorganizing after damage or by building new pathways based on experience
Neurogenesis
The formation of new neurons
Corpus callosm
The long band of neural fibers connecting to the two brain hemispheres and carry messages between them.
Split brain
A condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brains 2 hemispheres by cutting the fibers. Mainly those of the corpus callosum… connecting them.
If a neuro surgeon stimulated your right motor cortex, you would most likely:p
Move your LEFT leg.
How do different neural networks communicate with one another to let you respond when a friend greets you?
The visual cortex is a neural network of sensory neutrons connected via interneurons to other neutral networks, including auditory networks. This allows you to integrate visual and auditory information to respond when a friend you recognize greets you at a party.
Which of the following body region has the greatest representation in the somatosensory cortex?
The lips
Judging and planning are enabled by______ lobes.
Frontal lobes
What would it be like to talk on the phone if you didn’t have temporal lobe association areas? What would you hear? What would you understand?
You would hear sounds, but without the temporal lobe association areas you would be unable to make sense of what you were hearing.
The “uncommitted” areas that make up about 3/4 of the cerebral cortex are called _________ ____________.
Association areas
Plasticity is especially evident in the brains of:
Young children
An experimenter flashes the word heron across the visual field of a man who’s corpus callosum has been severed. Her is transmitted to his right hemisphere and ON to his left hemisphere. When asked to indicate what he saw, the man said :
He saw ON but points to HER
Studies of people with split brains and brain scans of those with undivided brains indicate that the left hemisphere excels in:
Processing languages.
Damage to the brains right hemisphere is most likely to reduce a persons ability to:
Make references
Psychoactive drugs
A chemical substance that alters perceptions and moods.
Substance use disorder
Continued substance (abuse) craving and use despite significant life disruption and/or physical risk.
Tolerance
The diminishing effect with regular use at the same dose of a drug, requiring the user to take larger and larger doses before experiencing the drugs effect.
Addiction
Compulsive craving of drugs or certain behaviors (such as gambling) despite known adverse experiencing the drugs effect.
Withdrawal
The discomfort and distress that follow discontinuing use of an addictive drug or behavior.
Alcohol use disorder
(Alcoholism) alcohol use marked by tolerance, withdrawal, and and a drive to continue problematic use.
Depressants
Drugs such as alcohol, barbiturates and opiates that reduce neural activity and slow body’s functions.
Barbiturates
Drugs that depress the central nervous system activity, reducing anxiety but impairing memory and judgement.
Neuroleptic drugs
Given to help with mental disorders
Opiates
Opium and its derivatives such as morphine and heroin; depress neural activity, temporarily leasing pain and activity
Stimulants
Drugs such as caffeine and nicotine and the more powerful amphetamines, cocaine, ecstasy and methamphetamine That excite neural activity and speed up body function.
Amphetamines
Drugs that stimulate neural activity causing accelerated body functions and associated energy and mood change.
Nicotine
A stimulating and highly addictive psychoactive drug in tobacco.
Cocaine
A powerful and addictive stimulant derived from the coca plant; produces temporarily increased alertness and euphoria
Methamphetamine
A powerfully addictive drug that stimulates the central nervous system with accelerated body functions and associated energy and mood changes; overtime appears to reduce baseline dopamine levels.
Ecstasy (MDMA)
A synthetic stimulant and mild hallucinogenic. Produces euphoria and social intimacy but with short term health risks and long term harm to serotonin- producing neurons and mood and cognition
Hallucinogens
Psychedelic (mind manifesting) drugs such as LSD, that distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the absence of sensory input.
LSD
A powerful hallucinogenic drug; also known as acid ( lysergic acid diethyl-amide )
THC
The major active ingredient in marijuana; triggers a variety of effects including mild hallucinations.
After continued use of a psychoactive drug, the drug user needs to take larger doses to get the desired effect. This is referred to as:
Tolerance
The depressants include alcohol, barbiturates and:
Opiates
Why might alcohol make a person more helpful or more aggressive?
It is a disinhibitor- makes one more likely to do what we would have done sober, wether that is being helpful or be more aggressive.
Long term use of ecstasy can:
Damage serotonin producing neurons
Near- death experiences are strikingly similar to the experience envoys by____________ drugs.
Hallucinogenic.
Use of marijuana:
Impairs motor coordination perception, reaction time, and memory
An important psychological contributor to drug use is:
The feeling that life is meaningless and directionless
Developmental psychology
A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive and social change through out the life span.
Developmental researchers who consider how biological, psychological, and social-cultural forces interact are focusing on_______ and _________.
Nature and nurture
Zygote
The fertilized egg; it enters a 2 week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo
Embryo
The developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization through the second month
Fetus
The developing human organism from about 9 weeks after concept to birth
Teratogens
Agents such as chemicals and viruses that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS)
Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant women’s heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small out of proportion head and normal facial features.
Habituation
Decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulant, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.
The 3 major issues that interest developmental psychologists are:
Nature/nature. Stability/change. Continuity/stages
Although development is lifelong, there is stability of personality over time. For example:
Temperament tends to remain stable throughout life
From the very first weeks of life, infants differ in their characteristics emotional reactions, with some infants being intense and anxious, while others are easy going and relaxed. These differences are usually explained as differences in___________.
Temperament
Body organs first. Whom to form and function during the period of _________; within 6 months, during the period of the ________, the organs are sufficiently functional to allow a good chance of survival.
Embryo. Fetus.
Chemicals that pass through the placenta’s screen and may harm an embryo or fetus are called___________.
Teratogens.
Maturation
Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience.
Critical period
An optimal period early in life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces moral development.
Cognition
All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering and communicating
Scheme
A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information
Assimilation
Interpreting our. Ew experiences in terms of our existing schema
Accommodation
Adapting our current understandings (schema) to incorporate new information.
Sensorimotor stage
In piaget’s theory, the stage (from birth to nearly 2 years old) during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities.
Object permanence
The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived
Pre-operational stage
In Piaget’s theory, the stage (from about 2 to 6 or 7 years of age.) during which a child learns to use language but does not yet comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
Stranger anxiety
The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age.
Attachment
An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation
Imprinting
The process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life.
Temperament
A person’s characteristics emotional reactivity and intensity
Basic trust
According to Erik Erickson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy and appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers
Stroke a newborns cheek and the infant will root for a nipple. This illustrates:
Reflex
Between ages 3 and 6, the human brain experiences the greatest growth in the __________ loves, which enable rational planning and aid memory.
Frontal
Which of the following is true of motor-skill development?
The sequence, but not the timing is universal
Why can’t we consciously recall how we learned to walk when we were infants.
We have no consequence memories of events occurring before about age 3 1/2, in part because major brain areas have not been developed yet.
Use Piaget’s first 3 stages of cognitive development to explain why young children are not just miniature adults in the way they think.
Infants in Piagets sensorimotor stage tend to be focused only on their own perceptions of the world and may, for example, be unaware that objects continue to exist when unseen. A child in the pre operational stage is still egocentric and incapable of appreciating simple logic, such as reversibility of operations. A preteen in concrete operational stage is beginning to think logically about concrete events but not about abstract concepts.
Although Piaget’s stage theory continues to inform our understanding of children’s thinking, many researchers believe that:
Piaget’s stages begin earlier and development is more continuous than he realized
An 8th month old infant who reacts to a new a babysitter by crying and clinging to his fathers shoulder is showing:
Stranger anxiety
In a series of experiments, the Harlows found that monkeys raised with artificial mothers tended, when afraid, to cling to their cloth mother, rather thank to a wife mother holding the feeding bottle. Why was this finding important?
Before these studies, many psychologists believed that infants became attached to those who nourished them.
Adolescence
The transition period from childhood to adulthood extending from puberty to independence.
Puberty
The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
Identity
Our sense of self; according to Erickson, the adolescents task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and interrogating various roles.
Social identity
The “we” aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to “who am I”? That comes from our group membership.
Intimacy
In Erickson’ theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships a primary developmental fast in young adulthood
Emerging adulthood
A period from about age 18- mid 20 when many in western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults.
Adolescence is marked by the onset of:
Puberty
According to Piaget, a person who can think logically about abstracts is in the _______ __________ stage.
Formal operations
In Erikson’s stages, the primary task during adolescence is:
Forging an identity
Some developmental psychologists now refer to the period that occurs in some western cultures from age 18 to the mid 20’s and beyond ( up to the time of full adult independence) as ___________ _______.
Emerging adulthood
Menopause
The time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a women experiences as her ability to reproduce declines.
Cross-sectional study
A study in which people of different ages are compared to each other
Longitudinal study
Research in which the same people are restudied and retested over a period of time.
Social clock
The culturally preferred timing of socials events such as marriage, parenthood and retirement.
By age 65, a person would be most likely to experience a cognitive decline in ability to:
Recall and list all the important terms and concepts in a module.
How do cross - sectional and longitude look studies differ?
Cross- sectional studies compare people of different ages
Longitudinal: restudy and retest the same people over a long period of time.
Freud defined healthy adults as one who is able to love and work.
Erickson agreed, observing that the adult struggles to stain intimacy and generativity
Contrary to what many people assume
Positive feelings tend to grow after midlife
Asexual
Having no sexual attraction to others
Testosterone
The most important of the male sex hormones. Both males and females have it, but the additional testosterone in males stimulates the growth of the male sex organs during the fetal period, and the development of the male sex characteristics during puberty.
Estrogens
Sex hormones, such as estradiol, secreted in greater amounts by females Athens by males and contributing to female sex characteristics. In nonhuman female mammals estrogen levels peak during ovulation, promoting sexual receptivity.
Sexual response cycle
The 4 stages of sexual responding described by masters and Johnson: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution
Refractory period
A resting period after orgasm during which a man cannot achieve orgasm
Sexual dysfunction
A problem that consistently impairs sexual arousal or functioning
Erectile disorder
Inability to develop or maintain an erection due to insufficient blood flow to the penis.
Female orgasmic disorder
Distress due to infrequently or never experiencing organism
Paraphilias
Sexual arousal from fantasies, behaviors or urges involving non-human objects the suffering of self or others and or non consenting persons.
AIDS ( acquired immune deficiency syndrome)
A life threading , sexually transmitted infection caused by the human immunodeficiency virus aids depletes the immune system leaving the person vulnerable to infections.
Social script
Culturally modeled guide for how to act in Various situations.
Sexual orientation
An enduring sexual attraction toward members of ones own sex (homosexual orientation) the other sex ( heterosexual orientation) or both sexes (bisexual orientation)
A striking effect on hormonal changes on human sexual behavior is the:
Sharp rise in sexual interest at puberty
In describing the sexual response cycle, masters and Johnson noted that:
Men experience a refractory period during which they cannot experience organism
What is the difference between sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias?
Sexual dysfunctions are problems that men and women may have related to sexual arousal and sexual function
Paraphilias are conditions which maybe classified as psychological disorders in which sexual arousal is associated with nonhuman objects the suffering of self or others and or no consenting persons.
The use of condones during sex________reduce the risk of HIV and _________ fully protect against skin to skin STIs
Does. Doesn’t.
An example of an external stimulus that might influence sexual behavior is:
A sexually explicit film.
Which factors have researchers thus far found to be unrelated to the development of our sexual orientation?
Researchers have found no evidence that any environmental factors (parental relationships, childhood experiences, peer relationships or dating experiences) influences the development of our sexual orientation.
