topics about healthy people Flashcards
what are the two types of cognitive processing?
bottom up: sensory driven, organises incoming information
top down: driven by knowledge, experience and expectation (used to determine perception in ambiguous circumstances)
what is the whole percept and who came up with it?
the tendencies we all have to organise everything into systems and seek meaningful groupings (e.g. by proximity, similarity, continuity)
gestalt
what is the ‘doors of perception’ theory about perception and who came up with it?
our brain is subconsciously selective about what we remember, this prevents us from being overwhelmed by large amounts of useless information
Huxley
What is the ‘context of madness’ experiment and who carried it out?
Rosenhan
patients (normal healthy people) were told to pretend to be hearing voices, were diagnosed with schizophrenia, were all hospitalised, later discharged with schizophrenia supposedly in remission - perceptive expectations were challenged
what are the 5 altered states of consciousness?
- sleep
- dreams
- psychoactive drugs
- meditation
- hypnosis
What is the hard problem and who came up with it?
to explain how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience
what is an example of actions that are always unconscious?
visuomotor control
an example of something that is normally unconscious but can be brought under some conscious control
biofeedback
an example of a skilled action that is learned with conscious effort but becomes automatic
playing the piano
an example of a skilled action that, once learned, can be done consciously or subconsciously
driving a car
example of an action that always seems to be done consciously
recalling a phone number
types of psychoactive drugs, by affect on behaviour (6)
sedatives hypnotics stimulants opiates hallucinogens psychedelics
three different altered states which can occur as a result of psychedelic drugs
hallucinations: visual - patterns and colours
delusions: merging with surroundings
emotional changes: ranging from euphoria to terror
2 different types of meditation
one point (concentrative) meditation: diminish sensory input (e.g. repeat mantra or movement like tai chi)
open meditation: aware of everything around, experience not met with a response (e.g. mindfulness)
who was the researcher who did a lot of work on hypnosis?
kilstrom
what does someone do when in a hypnotised state?
- they’re receptive to suggestions
- they narrow their attention to a single source
- they lack initiative and wilful action
- they’re in a trance-like state
(however, outwardly they can appear fully alert and interacting normally)
what are positive hallucinations?
when someone sees or hears something that isn’t there
what are negative hallucinations?
when someone fails to perceive something (e.g. pain)
what are the two halves of sleep and what type of sleep is present in both of them?
core sleep:
- first 5 hours
- most of deep (stage 3 + 4) sleep
- half of REM sleep
optional sleep:
- next 2+ hours
- mostly stages 1 + 2
how long is our natural circadian rhythm and what study worked this out?
25 hours and the bunker study
participants had no indication of time or outside light levels
the effect of age on sleep
as age increases: total reduction in sleep time, early reduction in % of REM (peaks at 8 months)
by age 40, there has been a large reduction in stage 3 + 4 sleep
what are parasomnias and when do they occur?
sleep walking, talking and nightmares
occur in stage 3 + 4 of sleep (not REM)
decrease with age
what is the mean sleep duration?
7.75 hours a night
when do dreams occur?
not always during REM, however twice as likely to be during REM, and if they are during REM then they’re 6 times more vivid
what are hypnotics?
sleep inducing drugs
how common is insomnia?
1/3 of population record having it (and in a 1/3 of them it is severe)
normally a symptom of a secondary problem (e.g. depression or pain)
what is cataplexy?
paralysis of voluntary muscles (can occur with people who have narcolepsy)
who was randy gardner?
holds world record for longest without sleep (11 days)
what are the three stages of memory?
encoding (transformation)
storage (retention)
retrieval (recovery)
what is the multi-store memory model and who came up with it?
short term store of memories, articulatory loop forms the working memory
what are the two ways of encoding sensory information and what are the features of them?
-echoic memory (phonological):
recency present, sound lingers
“echo is a sound”
-iconic memory (visual):
no recency effect, image quickly fades
“icons are figurines that you can see”
what is chunking?
the lumping together of bits of information to make it easier to remember (e.g. making historical dates out of single digit numbers)
what are the 3 types of long term memory?
episodic: autobiographical (e.g. when did you last ride a bike)
semantic: knowledge about the world (e.g. knowing what a bike is)
procedural: the skills bases (e.g. knowing how to ride a bicycle)
What is hyperthymesia?
a condition where you have highly superior autobiographical memory (aka HSAM)
irrepressible stream of memories, impairs cognitive function
where does memory consolidation occur (i.e. to move from working memory to long term memory)?
the hippocampus
what is classical conditioning and who came up with it?
conditioned stimulus (CS) is paired with an unconditioned stumulus (UCS) - CS is usually a neutral stimulus (light noise), unconditioned stimuls could be shock or food,
pavlov came up with it
Pavlovs dogs; initially UCS was food and uncondition response (UR) was saliva, bell (US) not assosciated with anything, after reinforcement, bell –>food–>saliva
Could test as afterwards, bell would cause saliva
what is latent inhibition?
past learning experience changes ability to aquire new assosciations through pavlovian conditioning - learning about safe events
what is operant conditioning and who came up with it?
Action –> reinforcement, eg/ bar press–>food
basic principle of law of effect, behaviours that are followed by good things happen more often
skinner
what are the three types of reinforcers when it comes to conditioning?
primary - (unconditioned) eg/food (inherently reinforcing)
secondary - becomes enforcing (eg money)
social - consequences of behaviour (smiling noddin verbal praise and attention)
what is chaining?
breaking aciton into component parts, each action being positivley reinofrced by cuing next stage in process
what is negative reinforcement?
action, reach desired reaction, individual learns to quickly resort back to original action to get desired reaction again, viscous circle - extinction burst
what is the best predictor of an adolescents level of self esteem?
their physical appearance
what is the social comparison theory and who came up with it?
festinger
we have a drive for self evaluation
-we use social and relationship information
the function of this is to validate our own attitudes and beliefs (hence why you hang around with people who are similar to you) and it helps to maintain our self esteem (we all have a self serving bias)
what unrealistic optimism, who has it and who recognised it?
weinstein recognised it (“stein=pig, pigs flying is unrealistic optimism)
every one has it (except people who have depression)
everyone thinks they will have better prospects than the average person and fewer bad things than the average person. (this is a protective behaviour)
what is the lake wobegon effect?
human tendency to overestimate one’s achievements and capabilities, especially in relation to others (self serving bias)
when can young children recognise themselves in a mirror and what is this phenomenon called?
by age 2
called visual self-concept
at this age they can also identify themselves by their gender, age and appearance
what is theory of mind and what condition is it absent in?
- ideas about own and others beliefs and feelings
- acquired about age 4
- boys develop it later than girls
- absent in autism
four determinants for liking people
- physical attractiveness (halo effect)
- proximity
- similarity
- familiarity
who showed obedience to authority and how did they do it?
miligram
got people to follow orders from a scientist to give (what they thought were) electric shocks to actors and almost everyone gave all of the shocks, because the scientist told them to
what does division of impact promote?
bystander apathy, as if lots of people see something bad happening then the responsibility is divided between them all so each individual feels very little personal responsibility to help (also audience inhibition, people are more likely to do things when they aren’t being watched)
what is social facilitation?
people’s ability to do an EASY task improves if people are watching them
what is social inhibition?
people’s ability to do a HARD task decreases if people are watching them
what is social loafing?
people individually work less hard if they are part of group (e.g. the sum of 6 people individually pulling on a rope is greater than is all 6 people pulled of the rope together)
what is the risky shift?
a group consensus is almost always riskier than the average decision made by individuals prior to a group discussion
what is group polarisation?
group discussion strengthens the average inclination of group members
who carried out work on conformity and what did they find out?
solomon asch (“think solomon is a religious figure, and people conform to religion”)
people tend to conform to what others think, even if they think it’s wrong, and more so when it is not anonymous!
