Unit 3 Psychology QCE

CNS

Brain and Spinal Cord

PNS

Somatic and Autonomic Nervous System

Somatic Nervous System

Carries messages from sensory receptors to CNS

Autonomic Nervous System

sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system

sympathetic nervous system

fight or flight

parasympathetic nervous system

rest and digest

spinal cord

connects brain and PNS

spinal reflex

involuntary response to stimuli without brain (reflex arc)

cerebral cortex

frontal, occipital, parietal, and temporal lobes

Broca's area

speech production

Wernicke's area

language comprehension

Broca's aphasia

non-fluent speech

Wernicke's aphasia

speech makes no sense

Geschwind's territory

connects Broca's and Wernicke's areas

Voluntary movement

coordinated from primary motor cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglis

emotions

limbic system, amygdala and prefrontal cortex

excitatory neurotransmitters

excites postsynaptic neurons into firing

inhibitory neurotransmitters

inhibits postsynaptic neurons from firing

Acetylcholine

Excitatory neurotransmitter that activates muscle contractions

epinephrine

adrenaline hormone responsible for flight or fight

Norepinephrine

cancels adrenaline and calms body

dopamine

carries messages between neurons to ensure initiation and maitenance of movements

Serotonin

regulates mood, memory, and sleep

Parkinson's disease

CNS disorder caused by lower levels of dopamine

Alzheimer's disease

Characterised by gradual widespread degeneration of brain neurons causing memory and cognitive decline

Visual reception

enables sensation and perception of external light stimuli

visual transduction

conversion of light to neural signals by visual receptors

Visual Transmission

sending sensory information to relavent areas of the brain

visual selection

feature detectors

visual perception process

stimulus, reception, transduction, transmission, interpretation

Visual perception principles

depth and visual cues

biological influences on vision

Ageing, genetics

perceptual set

past experience context

Hudson 1960

cultural evidence indicates importance of past experience on visual perception

Deregowski and Muldrow 1972

Lack of experience with 2D images influences the ability to identidy images

Muller-Lyer

Optical illusion of arrows

Ames room

optical illusion of a room that uses distoryed sizes

Ponzo Visual illusions

railway tracks that suggest hums will judge object size based on background

Sensory Memory

brief memory retaining impressions only

Short term memory

15-30 seconds with a capacity for 7 items

Long term memory

storage of info over an extended period

Baddeley and Hitch

Working memory model

LOP Model

Levels of processing memory including long term

implicit memory

procedural memory

explicit memory

episodic and semantic memory

Hippocampus

memory formation and storage

cerebellum

forming and storing implicit memory

chunking

breaking information into smaller sections to learn

rehearsal

maintenance and elaborative memory

Mnemonics

learning technique can be song, rhyme, or phrase

method of loci

mind palace way to store memory

SQ4R

survey, question, read, reflect, recite, and review

Grant et al. 1998

studying and being tested in same condition to improve memory

Classical Conditioning (Pavlov)

2 stimuli are repeatedly paired

UCS

unconditioned stimulus

UCR

unconditioned response

NS

neutral stimulus

CS

conditioned stimulus

CR

conditioned response

Stimulus Generalisation

When a new stimulus evokes a similar response to another stimulus

Stimulus discrimination

when learnt to only respond to original stimulus

extinction response

response following consistent non-reinforcement of the response

spontaneous recovery

The reappearance of a conditioned response after apparent extinction

Watson and Rayner (1920)

Little Albert fear response to loud noise

positive reinforcement

Increasing behaviors by presenting positive stimuli, such as food.

negative reinforcement

the reinforcement of a response by the removal or avoidance of an unpleasant stimulus (not punishment)

punishment

unpleasant consequence or removal of pleasant consequence following a response

social learning theory

Replication of observed behaviour (Bandura's Bobo doll)

Vicarious conditioning

observing a model's behaviour being rewarded or punished and acting accordingly (e.g., seeing someone eat cake and get stomach pain so you dont eat the cake to avoid stomach pain)