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Intro to Psych > Unit 2 > Flashcards

Unit 2 Flashcards

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1
Q

the constructive brain

A

the brain actively constructs representation of world and makes assumptions about the world based on 3 things (light and shadows, cues to size and debt, and object structure); rules operate without conscious input and can cause optical illusions

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2
Q

cornea

A
  • light passes through here, it is the eye’s thick, transparent outer layer
  • it focuses incoming light, which then enters lens
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3
Q

iris

A
  • band of muscle, determines eye’s color and controls pupil’s size
  • accommodation is process where behind iris, muscles change shape of lens; flatten it to focus on distant objects and thicken it to focus on farther closer
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4
Q

pupil

A
  • hole in eye where light is transmitted
  • it is dark circle at the center of the eye, a small opening in front of the lens
  • by contracting (closing) or dilating (opening), it controls how much light enters eye
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5
Q

retina

A
  • light that is bent inward by the lens and is focused comes to retina, which is thin inner surface of back of the eyeball
  • it contains sensory receptors that induce light into neural signals
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6
Q

what is light a part of

A
  • part of electromagnetic radiation and visible light is only small part of spectrum (400 to 700 nanometers)
  • color of light is determined by wavelengths of electromagnetic waves that reach eye
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7
Q

what are two types of photoreceptors

A
  1. rods (sensitivity)
  2. cones (acuity)
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8
Q

Rods (type of photoreceptor)

A
  • able to detect light
  • can see in low light conditions + night vision
  • poor in fine detail
  • located most in periphery
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9
Q

Cones (type of receptor)

A
  • can see fine details
  • used for reading and color vision
  • concentrated on central region (forea)
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10
Q

Types of Cones

A
  • according to trichromatic theory, color vision results from activity in 3 types of cones that are sensitive to different wavelengths
    1. Blue: S Cones (small wavelength)
    2. Green: M Cones (medium wavelength)
    3. Red: L cones (long wavelength)
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11
Q

Fovea

A
  • near retina’s center, where cones are densely packed in small region
  • cones become increasingly scare near outside edge, rods are concentrated at retina’s edge
  • no rods are in the fovea
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12
Q

color blindness

A

abnormal or missing cone type

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13
Q

Opponent Color Processing

A
  • opponent process theory says that red and green are opponent colors to blue and yellow, is complement to trichromatic theory
  • this describes the second stage of visual processing
  • cone output converted to opponent pairs
    ex: (red - green, blue - yellow, white - black)
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14
Q

Assumption #1: Light and shadows

A

Light comes from above (makes sense evolutionarily, with sunlight from above)

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15
Q

Assumption #2: Shadows have soft edges (??)

A
  • Checker-Shadow Illusion (cylinder on checkerboard): A and B are the same shade of grey dispute appearing like 2 different ones, important to note that B would have to be much lighter in real world
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16
Q

Assumption #3: Cues to depth

A
  • helps us transform 2D image on retina to 3D world
  • 2 types of cues: binocular (two eyes) and monocular (1 eyes) (ex: occlusion, relative size + height, etc.)
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17
Q

Binocular depth cues

A
  • available from both eyes together + present only when viewing 3D world
  • provide internal cues about how far away something is
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18
Q

Monocular depth cues

A
  • available from each eye alone + provide org info that can be used to infer depth
  • emerge when we move through space + depend on relative changes to visual input with motion
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19
Q

Ponzo Illusion

A
  • example of size illusion, it is the one of the train-track
  • the lines appear to be the same size but appear different sizes
  • in the real world, the top rectangle would have to be much larger
  • depth cue: linear perspective
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20
Q

The Ames Room

A
  • example of size illusion, of the trapezoidal room
  • the twins standing on 2 sides of the room, one appears to be significantly larger than the other but the identical twins are the same size
  • to see in person, can only look with one eye or than you can tell there is something wrong with it
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21
Q

Assumption 4: Generic Viewpoint

A
  • unlikely to reflect accidental viewpoint
  • Penrose Triangle: it is impossible w/ depth, only possible 2D
  • picture of people holding up the Leaning Tower of Piza is forcer perspective photography
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22
Q

Object Completition

A
  • completion is primitive and automatic
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23
Q

Kanizsa Triangle

A
  • edges of “Pac-men” unlikely to align by choice
  • triangle looks brighter than background
  • edges unlikely to align by chance
  • type of illusory contours
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24
Q

Gestalt grouping principles

A
  • group of surfaces together
  • unified perception from sensory stimuli
    (1) proximity: closer two figures are to each other, more likely we are to group them and see them as part of same object
    (2) similarity: tend to group figures according to how closely they resemble each other
    (3) good continuation: tent to group together edges or contours that are smooth or continuous as opposed to those that are abrupt or have sharp edges
    (4) closure: tent to complete figures that have gaps
    ~(5) common fate: w tent to see things that move together as belonging to same group
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25
Q

Rubin’s “face-vase” illusion

A
  • example of segmenting figure and group
  • vase with queen Elizabeth’s profile on one side and Prince Phillip’s profile on the other side, can see when against solid backdrop
  • classic illustration distinguishing figure from group is reversible figure illustration
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26
Q

Assumption #5: Certainty over ambiguity

A
  • happens especially with faces
  • brain is looking at patterns, wants to know if something is out there
  • pareidolia: looking for patterns in visual inputs
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27
Q

Face Inversion effect

A
  • we are wired to see faces but efficient processing only happens for upright faces
  • Thatcher illusion: see 2 faces upside down and look okay, when turn right side up, can see one is clearly disfigured
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28
Q

Hue

A
  • consists of distinctive characteristics that place particular color in spectrum, depends primarily on light dominant wavelength when it reaches eye level
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29
Q

Saturation

A
  • it is purity of color; varies according to mixture of wavelengths in stimulus
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30
Q

Lightness

A
  • color’s perceived intensity; determined chiefly by amount of light reaching eye + could depend on background
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31
Q

object constancy

A
  • perceive collection of sensory information as belonging to same object, object constancy leads us to perceive object as unchanging despite changes in sensory data the compose object
  • for most part, changing object’s angle, distance or illumination doesn’t change our perception of that object’s size, shape, color, or lightness
  • brain computes relative magnitude of sensory signals it receives rather than relying on each sensation’s absolute magnitude
  • perceptual system ability to make relative judgements allows it to maintain constancy across various perceptual contexts
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32
Q

Prosopagnosia

A
  • when someone has particular deficits in ability to recognize faces but not in ability to recognize other objects; this implies that facial recognition differs from non-facial object recognition
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33
Q

Binocular disparity

A
  • cue that is caused by distance between human’s 2 eyes
  • brain has access to two different but overlapping retinal images and uses disparity between 2 retinal images to compute distance to nearby objects
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34
Q

Convergence

A
  • refers to way eye muscles turn eye inward when we are viewing object nearby
  • to focus both eyes on close object, requires eye to converge more than if object is away
  • brain knows how much eyes are converging through feedback from eye muscles and uses this info to perceive distance
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35
Q

occlusion

A

near objects block objects that are far away

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36
Q

relative size

A

far off objects project smaller retinal image than close objects do; if they are the same physical size

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37
Q

familiar size

A

because we know how large familiar objects are, can tell how far away they are by size of their retinal image

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38
Q

linear perspective

A

seemingly parallel lines appear to converge in distance

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39
Q

texture gradient

A

uniformly textured surface recedes, it texture continuously becomes dense

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40
Q

positive relative to horizon

A

all else being equal, objects below horizon that appear higher in visual fields are perceived as being farther away

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41
Q

motion parallax

A
  • arises from relative speed with which objects move across retina as person moves
  • because view of objects closer to us changes more quickly than does view of objects that are farther away, motion provides information about how far away something is
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42
Q

Stroboscopic movement

A
  • perceptual illusion that occurs when 2 or more slightly different images are presented in rapid succession
  • demonstrates that brain, much as it fills in gaps to perceive objects, fills in gaps in perception to motion
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43
Q

Motion aftereffects

A
  • occurs when you gaze at moving image for a long time and then look at stationary scene
  • experience momentary impression that new scene is moving in opposite direction from moving image
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44
Q

Change Blindness

A
  • we think we perceive a rich detailed world but representation sparse
  • we cannot attend everything to vast array of visual info available, often “blind” to large changes in our environment
  • change blindness is a phenomenon of visual perception that occurs when a stimulus undergoes a change without this being noticed by its observer
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45
Q

Experiment for Change Blindness

A
  • Simon and Levin: where experimenter in hard hand asked for directions, only 50% of participants noticed change but didn’t notice change in person
  • in 1st experiment, professors didn’t notice at all compared to college students
  • also depends on group membership (where stranger was easily categorized from being from a specific and different social group)
  • goes to show we only perceive and remember basic gist; details are “seen” but are not identified or remembered
  • in real life, visual environment is fairly stable as out there not much is changing
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46
Q

3 main points about attention

A

(1) attention involves selection: have to select information and responsible for things entering into conscious awareness
(2) attention selects for awareness
(3) attention has limited resolution: limits on selection space
ex: talking/having conversation at party: there are many going on but can only attend one conversation at a time

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47
Q

Dichotic Listening Task

A
  • example of attentional selection
  • where different messages are played into each eye
  • subject “shadows” (repeats out load) one stream
  • little of unattended input is recalled
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48
Q

Visual Shadowing Task

A
  • example of attentional selection
  • ex: pay attention to the team wearing the white shirts, count the # of times they pass the ball, many people fail to notice the gorilla that walks in the background
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49
Q

Negative priming (?)

A
  • fate of unattended items due to inattentional blindness
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50
Q

Exceptions to the fate of the unattended

A
  • some things just grab out attention (someone’s name, we have bottom up cues for perspective)
  • “pop-out” of certain perceptual features (automatic exogenous, involuntary, attention: cannot be controlled or suppressed)
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51
Q

Endogenous Attention

A
  • intentionally diverting of attention in way, some stimuli demand attention and virtually shut off ability to attend to anything else
  • some stimuli, such as emotional stimuli that signal potential danger, may readily capture attention b/ provided important info
  • Endogenous, or top-down, attention is a voluntary, sustained, goal-driven process
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52
Q

Exogenous attention

A
  • when focus of your attention is driven by stimuli or event, being driven by external events/stimuli in environment
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53
Q

Conjunction search

A
  • search for combination of simple features
  • process is slow and serial
  • must select each time in turn or much select each item in turn
  • ex: where is the horizontal green T?
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54
Q

Spatial limits of attention

A
  • visual crowding: difficulty recognizing objects in clutter
  • coerce spatial recognition of attention
  • difficulty reorganizing objects in clutter
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55
Q

Objects limits of attention

A
  • Multiple object tracking (MOT): can only track 4 objects at a time, becomes much harder at higher speeds
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56
Q

Time limits of attention

A
  • attentional blink: difficulty selecting 2nd target short time after 1st target
  • ex: rapid display of letters go by, are told to say what letter comes after W, are able to recognize W in display, but most people miss what letters next as are still processing that W went by
  • attentional selection takes certain amount of time, cannot be redeployed immediately
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57
Q

Heavy Media Multitaskers vs Light (LMM) (??)

A
  • perceptual filtering
  • task switching
  • working memory
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58
Q

How can we improve attention?

A
  • we can improve attentional through video games
  • requires smaller attentional blink, improved object tracking but only certain games help
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59
Q

Understanding counsciousness

A
  • mental systems that operate at unconscious level
  • not due to motivation or suppressed trauma to avoid memories as Freud suggested
  • Daniel Dennet: the “magic” of consciousness says that we see illusions not tricks,
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60
Q

Anosognosia

A
  • Anosognosia is a neurological condition in which the patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition
  • ex: For example, someone with hemiplegia may not realize that one side of their body is weak or paralyzed. But they may still be aware of symptoms like difficulty speaking (aphasia) or loss of vision (hemianopia)
  • single largest reason why people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder refuse medications or do not seek treatment
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61
Q

qualia

A
  • your subjective experience of sensation, meaning qualitative experiences of your conscious state
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62
Q

sleep deprivation + deficiency

A
  • impaired concentration + decision making
  • emotional irritability
  • long term: increased risk of heart rate, diabetes
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63
Q

fatal familial insomnia

A
  • happens later in life where individuals can no longer sleep
  • insomnia followed in couple of years by dementia + more
  • very rare prion disease
  • causes atrophy of thalamus
  • death happens between 1-2 years
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64
Q

how is sleep a conscious experience?

A
  • sleep is an altered state of consciousness, still have some awareness of environment
  • conscious experience of world turned off
  • brain is still responding to some things out there in the environment
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65
Q

how do we quantify sleep?

A
  • using electroencephalography (EEG)
  • measures electrical activity in brain
  • shows distinct stages of sleep
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66
Q

what are the different stages of sleep?

A
  • wakefulness (counsciously aware)
  • stage 1
  • stage 2
  • stage 3/4
  • REM sleep
67
Q

Wakefulness

A
  • beta waves are when we are alert + awake; occur in little bursts so are not totally consistent
  • alpha waves occur when we are in wakeful relaxation. (happens when close your eyes or meditate)
68
Q

Sleep State 1

A
  • associated with light sleep; very easy to drift off, activity shifts to theta waves (short, frequent, desynchronized activity)
  • hypnagogic imagery or sense of falling/movement
  • not usually consciously aware that you are asleep
69
Q

Sleep State 2

A
  • sleep maintenance
  • less sensitive to external stimuli
  • sleep spindles and K-complexes
  • if loud noise, K complex afterward in brain
  • signals from brain mechanisms to maintain sleep
70
Q

Sleep Stage 3/4

A
  • slow wave sleep; associated with delta waves which are big slow waves of activity
  • have large amplitude, are regular but slow
  • this is deep sleep, hard to wake up; usually very disoriented upon waking
71
Q

REM Sleep

A
  • rapid eye movement sleep
  • after stage 4, sleep cycle reverses
  • this is where have active brain but sleep body (body paralysis, called atonia, nearly complete paralysis of body)
  • reemergence of beta waves
  • rapid eye movements though eyes remain closed
  • associated w/ vivid dreaming
72
Q

Changes in sleep cycle throughout night

A
  • cycle repeats in ~90 minute cycles throughout the night
  • sleep cycles get shorter over course of night
  • have multiple cycles throughout night
  • about 20 mins, can peak into consciously awake but not usually aware of these wakings
  • most of deep non-REM sleep occurs early
  • REM becomes more frequent later in sleep
73
Q

Insomnia

A
  • inability to initiate or maintain sleep
  • is treated w/ therapy or medication
  • sleeping pills are target inhibitory GABA receptors
  • may inhibit sleep atonia
  • another treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT-I)
74
Q

Obstructive Sleep Apnea

A
  • breathing stops for short periods of sleep
  • soft tissue of airways collapses, blocking air flow
  • sleeper is usually unaware of apniea
  • increased w/ obesity and age
  • treating by keeping airway open, such as CPAP
75
Q

Narcolespy

A
  • excessive sleepiness in normal waking hours, occurs for some breeds of dogs
  • often accompanied by cataplexy (sudden lose of muscle tone, triggered by strong emotions)
76
Q

REM behavior disorder

A
  • lack of muscle paralysis despite REM state (opposite of cataplexy)
  • individuals “act out” their dreams
  • may injure themselves or others
  • higher incidence in males over 50 (associated w/ higher risk of neurological disorders like Parkinsons)
77
Q

Circadian rhythm theory

A
  • sleep keeps animals inactive during times of greatest risk
  • ex: humans rely on vision so we sleep at night
  • doesn’t explain restorative, facilitive properties of sleep
  • animal only needs limited amount of time each day to accomplish necessities of survival and it is adaptive for them to spend remainder of time inactive
  • large predatory animals that are not vulnerable sleep a lot
78
Q

restorative theory of sleep

A
  • sleep allows body to rest + restore itself
  • growth hormone secreted during deep sleep
  • important for onset of puberty in young adults
  • over course of first couple of cycles, growth hormones are being released
  • when went to sleep later than normal, only get 2nd round of growth hormones
79
Q

Naps

A
  • Mednick said a nap is as good as a night of sleep for perceptual learning
  • nap + full night of sleep = 2 nights, boosted performance
    = REM = 90 minute nap but can make you feel more groggy
80
Q

Facilitation of Learning

A
  • sleep strengthens neural connections that made during waking period
  • consolidating of memories (integrating new memories w/ old memories)
  • REM sleep particularly important
81
Q

Dreams

A
  • product of altered consciousness
  • occur in REM and non-REM sleep (non-REM dreams are mundane activity while REM dreams are bizarre, emotional, illogical)
  • evolved threat rehearsal theory: dream consciousness is essentially an ancient biological defense mechanism, evolutionarily selected for its capacity to repeatedly simulate threatening events
82
Q

sleep walking (somnambulism)

A
  • relatively common behavior that occurs during slow wave sleep, typically within the first two hours or two of falling sleep
  • during episode, person is classy items seems disconnected from other people and surroundings
83
Q

hypnotism

A
  • person responding to suggestions experiences changes in memory, perception, and/or voluntary action
  • can be control by power of suggestion
  • 2 people involved, change is conscious awareness
  • hypnotism is extension or alteration of conscious experience / awareness
  • hypnosis cannot compel you again your wishes, recall past lives or childhood self (everyone cannot remember anything before the age of 3), produce more accurate memories
84
Q

history of hypnotism (placebo)

A
  • Mesmer: “animal magnetism”: special life form or energy of animate beings
  • placebo effect: didn’t need magnet at all; successfully treated patients using magnets, channeled by placing hands on or near patient
  • power of placebo: improvement in health following treatment even though it has no physiological effect, related to expectation and patient’s beliefs
85
Q

discovery of hypnosis

A
  • Marquis de Puysegur: people can be placed in sleep like trance, questioned practical implications
  • James Brand: can it be used as anesthesia
  • hypnotic analgesia: effective pain reduction in some situations, acute or chronic pain or even for child birth (amaze method)
86
Q

Formal definition of hypnosis

A
  • a willing and cooperative state in which: you relinquish control of your behavior, show intensely or overly focused attention, accept distortion of conscious experience
  • intense focus, not sleep
  • sensory input is not blocked
  • EEG: Alpha waves (wakeful relaxation), normal heart rate and breathing
87
Q

Hypnotic Suggestibility

A
  • ability to be hypnotized (wide variety)
  • some people are very easily hypnotized while others cannot at all
  • no one who doesn’t want to be hypnotized can be hypnotized, power of hypnosis resides in patient
  • most of us fall in the middle of hypnotic susceptibility score graph
88
Q

2 factors in hynotizability

A

(1) suggestibility: “relinquishing control” component (if a hynotist makes a suggestion, do you follow it)
(2) absorption: “Overly focused component” (ability to become totally absorbed in some experience, thought, or memory)

89
Q

Sociocognitive theory of hypnosis

A
  • social acting but there is no alteration of conscious state
  • imaginative social acting but normal
  • hypnotized people behave like the expect hypnotized people to behave
90
Q

Orne and Evans (1956)

A
  • hypnotized individuals do dangerous things
  • but so do individuals told to pretend they are hypnotized
  • grasping a venomous snack, putting hand in concentrated acid, throwing acid in experimenters face; second group was told to present they were hypnotized and same dangerous acts happened even though there was no hypnosis
  • subjects act like they think hypnotized people should; when asked were told that they can’t have been dangerous because it was part of science experiment
  • relinquishing control is not restricted to hypnosis, social roles influence behaviors
91
Q

Dissociation Theory (??)

A
  • hypnosis as altered state of consciousness
  • conscious awareness is dissociated (divided) from other aspects of consciousness
  • stroop task: reading word that are color names but are not the same color
  • before hypnosis, have activity in conflict monitoring areas
  • changes in brain activity to Stroop task (reg, green)
  • hypnotic suggestion: words = meaning less suggestion; following hypnosis, less interference in color naming
92
Q

Hypnosis, meditation, flow

A
  • examples of shifts in attention and consciousness awareness
  • meditation: focusing attention inward or on an object
  • flow: full immersion in enjoyable activity
93
Q

Constructive meditation

A

focus you attention on one thing, such as your breathing patterns, metal image, or specific phrase

94
Q

mindful meditation

A

let your thoughts flow freely, paying attention to them but not trying to react to them

95
Q

thinking

A
  • mental events as information processing
  • mentally represent + manipulate information
96
Q

analogical representation

A
  • share physical characteristic of object (looks like, tastes like)
97
Q

symbolic representation

A
  • abstract, unrelated to physical feature (word)
98
Q

concepts

A
  • when have objects and need to organize them
  • organizes objects, events, or relations around common themes
  • are organized using exemplars and prototype
99
Q

exemplars

A
  • categories are organized of exemplars
  • examples we encounter in our experience
100
Q

prototype

A
  • prototype based on most common exemplar
  • best example of the category (ex: “birdiest bird”)
  • behaviorally privileged (most readily recalled, faster responses)
101
Q

Problem solving

A
  • uses mental representations to achieve goals
  • complex form of thought requiring many mental process
  • 3 features: (goal-directness which means behavior related towards goal, use of sub goals which means breaking problem into smaller pieces, and path to solution which is sudden insight, reconstructing mental representations)
102
Q

Tower of Haoi

A
  • example of subgoals
  • can only move one disc at time and goal is to move “tower” of discs to another peg; cannot place larger disc on top of a smaller disk
  • have to use many subgoals and steps to get to end goal
103
Q

How do you know you are getting closer to goal?

A
  • subgoals are more clearly identified in games like Tower of Hanoi
  • harder in real life to identify appropriate information
104
Q

Insight

A

sudden realization of solution, “a-Ha” moment

105
Q

Kohler’s Chimpanzees

A
  • food placed out of reach beyond cage
  • chimps given 2 sticks, that individually were too short to reach the food
  • after several failing tried w/ each stick, the chimp shows insight of putting the 2 sticks together to reach the food
106
Q

2 String problem (Maler)

A
  • 2 strings hanging from the ceiling, goal is to tie them together but the strings are too short to reach both at once
  • solution is use of pliers (necessary insight: pliers as pendulum), is unconventional use of pliers
107
Q

functional fixedness

A
  • cognitive bias that limits a person to use an object only in the way it is traditionally used
  • can be obstacle of problem solving
  • to overcome this common problem solver needs to reinterpret objects potential function
  • the way problems presented can also impact how officially it’s solved
108
Q

mental sets

A
  • another obstacle to problem solving
  • mental sets: Mental set makes you blind to any alternative approaches. This tendency to use only those solutions that have worked in the past.
109
Q

assumptions about contraints

A
  • another obstacle with problem solving
  • think of 9 dot problem (need to draw line through all of them only using 4 lines)
  • solution was having to “think outside the box” as the lines extended beyond the dots
110
Q

algorithm

A
  • exhaust all possible combinations
  • could take a long time
111
Q

heuristic

A
  • “rules of thumb”: simplify problem
  • to unscramble word, know that YY can’t be together and know that in English, lots of words end in y
  • often quick and dirty, often unconscious
  • 2 types: representative and availability decision making heuristics
112
Q

code breaking during WW2

A
  • enigma machines used by Germans encrypted messages that were very hard to break
  • allies used heuristics to constrain problem
  • was daily weather report (in beginning of every message, used that as key to crack transmission)
  • RAF “gardening” (have people fly around German ally areas so Germans would talk about it and were able to encode it from there)
113
Q

Intelligence

A
  • ability to learn from experience, solve problems, use knowledge to adapt to new situations
114
Q

Alfred Benet

A
  • origins of intelligence testing
  • intelligence testing in school children
  • came up with the concept of mental age
115
Q

mental age

A

intellectual standing compared to peers of same chronological age

116
Q

Intelligence Quotient (IQ)

A
  • mental age/chronological age * 100 (means that 100 is the average IQ for any age)
  • the graph has a normal bell curve, is normal distribution (most scores fall close to the average and there are few scores at the tail)
117
Q

General intelligence (g)

A
  • single general factor proposed to underlie IQ (Spearman)
  • factor analyssis (IQ test items cluster on single factor)
  • statistical procedure that identified cultures or related items (factors) on test
  • could be one thing that explains many different results
118
Q

Multiple intelligence

A
  • Gardner introduced idea, but has no scientific support
  • could have different abilities in different domains
  • bodily-kinesthetic, linguistic, interpersonal, etc.
119
Q

Emotional Intelligence (EQ)

A
  • ability to manage, recognize, and regulate emotions
  • question of is it a form of intelligence?
  • correlated with well described personality tests so far
120
Q

Savant syndrome

A
  • man took 30 min helicopter tour of New York and reconstructed it over 3 days from memory
  • he was non verbal till the age of 7 and has autism
  • savant syndrome is condition in which person otherwise limited in mental ability has exceptional skill set
121
Q

Kim Peek, “megasavant”

A
  • had incredible memory (if give him any date, could tell you what day of the week it was; could tell you which page a quote from a book was)
  • but had lifelong problems of social difficulties, IQ was only 87, and had impaired motor skills
122
Q

Twin and Adoption Studies (??)

A
  • tests influence of genetics
  • Monozygotic (MZ) twins are identical twins with 100% shared genes
  • Dizygotic (DZ) twins are fraternal twins with 50% shared genes
  • adoption is shared environment with no shared genes
  • found that there is strong genetic influence of intelligence but environment matters too
123
Q

Gender differences in intelligence

A
  • no difference in average g between sexes
  • different strengths but high individual variation
  • women: verbal ability, detecting emotion
  • men: math aptitude, visuo-spatial processing
  • race and intelligence is highly controversial (strong correlation w/ environmental factors)
124
Q

Stereotype threat

A
  • worse performance on test when anxious about confirming negative stereotypes
  • can be reversed (ex: priming positive stereotypes)
125
Q

Fluid intelligence

A
  • one of the types of intelligence that g consists of
  • ability to understand abstract relations + think logically w/o prior knowledge
  • involves info processing, such as reasoning, drawing analogies, and thinking quickly + flexibly
126
Q

memory

A
  • capacity to retain skills and knowledge
  • multiple subsystems
  • actively reconstructed by the brain (not passive process like camera taking photos; are recreating experience from time and memory can change)
127
Q

amnesia

A

loss of memory due to brain damage, disease, or psychological trauma

128
Q

anterograde amnesia

A

inability to learn new memories

129
Q

retrograde amnesia

A

inability to recall old memories

130
Q

Misconceptions of amnesia

A
  • not general loss of personality/identity
  • profound amnesia due to stroke/infection/significant brain damage
  • “reversing amnesia”: getting hit on the head again doesn’t help
  • recovering of memories: partial or complete loss of memories
131
Q

Patient HM

A
  • surgical resection of hippocampus (had experimental surgery to treat severe epilepsy)
  • only part of the brain was missing
  • had profound anterograde amnesia as was unable to for new autobiographical memories
  • HM could maintain information for short periods of time like remembering 3 digit # for 15 mins but immediately forgot the whole experiment when he got distracted
  • couldn’t form new episodic memories
132
Q

cognitive psychology

A

study of hidden mental states, mental events as information

133
Q

Atkinson Shiffrin Model

A

1) sensory input leads to sensory memory which has unlimited capacity but short duration of 0.5 seconds
2) attention paid to that leads to short term memory (process of attention that puts in short-term) which is the same thing as working memory; this has limited capacity of 7 +/- 2 things and has duration of 30 seconds
3) if then encoded, then in long term memory which has unlimited capacity and the unlimited duration

134
Q

mental processes in 3 stage model

A
  • attention: encodes sensory memory in STM
  • rehearsal: keeps memory/info in STM (by repeating it)
  • encoding and retrieval is between STM and LTM
  • forgetting can happen at any stage
135
Q

sensory memory

A
  • holds image for fraction of second
  • immediate initial record of sensory information
  • close to original sensory form
  • limited duration
  • is sense specific: each sense has own sensory memory and duration of sensory memory varies by sense
136
Q

George Sperling

A
  • started with whole report: report all the letters that you saw (showed all of them for 1/20 of a second, people only remembered 4-5 but reported remembering seeing all the letters)
  • then did partial report where report letters from line that is outlined by the box; 1/3 of a second after seeing them and it is so much better, much better accuracy
  • sensory memory only holds for 1/3 of second
137
Q

change blindness

A
  • iconic memory decays in time between images
  • needs attention to reach short term memory
  • are able to notice if all attention is focused
138
Q

short term memory

A
  • active maintenance for some period of time
  • has duration of 30 seconds without rehearsal
  • limited capacity: “magic number of 7 +/- 2”
139
Q

chuncking

A
  • some items can be chucked together into meaningful units
  • organization of information in STM
  • chess players are able to be become very good with chunking, so it depends on experience
  • for chess players, it only happens with an actual layout, not for any random chess set up
140
Q

method of loci

A

“memory palace” with spatial memory
- image physical location + fill it with memorable painting
- one was celebs doing outrageous acts on everyday items and was able to memorize really long list

141
Q

long term memory

A
  • relatively permanent storage of information
  • capacity is nearly limitless (new info doesn’t displace old info)
  • duration: can last a lifetime, much longer than sensory and short term memory
142
Q

Mirror drawing task

A
  • Patient HM was told to draw a star inside a star shape but could only see through the mirror, over time the number of errors reduced
  • HM was able to do it better every time despite having no memory of doing it, could see improvements in performance
143
Q

procedural memory

A
  • mirror drawing relies on it
  • basal ganglia, cerebellum (motor learning and coordination)
  • implicit memory is automatic + unconscious
  • doesn’t require explicit episodic memory
  • long-term memory involved in the performance of different actions and skills
  • Reflecting in knowing how to do something; Responses become habits
144
Q

episodic memory

A
  • type of explicit long term memory (requires conscious effort)
  • memory requires conscious effort, have to think about it
  • involves conscious recollection of previous experiences together with their context in terms of time, place, associated emotions,
145
Q

semantic memory

A
  • type of explicit long term memory (requires conscious effort)
  • don’t depend on specific event/scenario
  • involving the capacity to recall words, concepts, or numbers, which is essential for the use and understanding of language
146
Q

serial position: primacy effect

A
  • people are good at remembering words in the beginning of the list
  • reflects long term memory, first items received have more rehearsal and are encoded into LTM
147
Q

serial position: recency effect

A
  • people are good at remembering last words of list
  • reflects working memory / short term memory because are words that just heard
  • disrupted by delay period between list and recall
148
Q

how do we improve our LTM?

A
  • encoding: “levels of processing”
  • retrieval: context dependent memory and state dependent memory
149
Q

encoding

A

-Craik and Lockhart with “levels of processing”: depth of processing during encoding phrase affects memory
- shallow: physical aspects (like how it looks), sound is a little better
- deep: conceptual aspect: meaning of word/relation to other concepts; elaborative rehearsal
- deep encoding takes time

150
Q

elaborative rehearsal

A
  • think of concepts conceptually, make connections between ideas
  • deeper processing leads to better LTM
151
Q

Cramming

A
  • best if distributed practice, spread over different days
  • cramming is the worst encoding
  • massed practice: jump all study into 1 time; doesn’t allow for deep encoding of material and leads to shallow memories
  • shallow encoding occurs when we process information, like words, structurally, by the way they appear, or phonemically, by the way they sound but not processing what it actually means
152
Q

Retrieval

A
  • recall is better when in same environment in which materials was learned
  • Encoding specificity principle (Godden and Baddeley): Scuba divers either learned on land or water and then were tested on land/water; better recall in same environment as learning
  • study in many different contexts (different places, times, states, etc)
  • recognition is much easier than recall
153
Q

false memories + “honest lying”

A
  • memories are not as reliable as we think
  • can be inaccurate + distorted
  • sometimes entirely imagined yet had confidence even when we are wrong
  • false memories factors: misleading information (false memories by suggestion), corroboration by authority figure, source confusion (“imagination inflation”); can lead to false confessions or false eyewitness identifications
154
Q

Deese-Roedinger-McDermott paradigm

A
  • related to theme/hidden meaning of list but word wasn’t actually in the list
155
Q

psychology of decision making

A
  • Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky
  • decisions are affected by how information is presented
  • framing effects: person who got silver, reference point is gold but person who got bronze their reference point is not placing
  • Asian disease problem
156
Q

Prospect Theory (Reference Dependent Unit)

A
  • decision depends on reference point
  • major component of prospect theory (descriptive theory on how people make decisions)
  • implications: status quo bias and aversion to move away from reference point
157
Q

Loss aversion

A

“losses loom larger”
- gains need to be 1.5x-2x bigger to be appealing to overcome loss aversion

158
Q

Implications of Prospect Theory

A

status quo bias: people prefer status quo, even when its not better (ex: Harvard faculty with healthcare)
- people have aversion to moving away from reference point (preference for default position); change from status quo seen as loss

159
Q

Default Preference examples

A
  • organ donations: “opt in” would be explicit consent and “opt out” would be presumed consent for donation
  • retirement plan: not that many sign up now, solution would be automatic enrollment
160
Q

Paradox of choice

A
  • limited cognitive resources
  • with many options, choices can become daunting
  • ex: selling jams; display with 24 options generated fewer sales than the display with 6
161
Q

representativeness heuristic

A
  • judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match the particular prototype
  • often doesn’t account for base rates (in example with characteristics given about Linda, there are many more bank tellers than feminist bank tellers)
  • conjunction fallacy: interpretation in terms of representativeness; likelihood in terms of match to prototype; doesn’t account for base rates
162
Q

availability heuristic

A
  • estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory
  • if something comes easily to mind, we assume that such events are common but usually come to mind for other reasons (b/ of vividness, gruesomeness, etc.)
163
Q

Overweighing low probabilities

A
  • people tend to overweigh the occurrence of very rare events and underestimate occurrence of common events
  • can result in disadvantageous decisions (ex: lottery)
164
Q

Social norms

A
  • we have intense awareness of group status + norms
  • comparisons to peers can enforce desired behavior
  • using social norms to nudge behavior (drinking on college campuses, increased rates of towel reuse in hotels, the most specific the message was the better, and reduced home energy consumption)

Intro to Psych (3 decks)

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