First exam of the 2nd quarter

Olfaction

The sense of smell. It is the ability to detect and identify odors through the olfactory system

True or false: all of our senses are processed via the thalamus before being sent to the cerebral cortex

FALSE: olfaction is the only one of our senses that does not get processed via the thalamus before being sent to the cerebral cortex

Pheromones

A special group of odorants that are olfactory chemical messages that are linked to sexual attraction.

Gustation

The sensation of tasting, which is made possible by the papillae located on our tongues, and the taste receptor cells located within the papillae.

What are the six types of taste?

sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami(savory) and oleogustus(fatty)

What are the taste receptors?

foliate papillae- located on the sides of our tongue and help us detect sour and bitter flavors. They are more abundant in early liife, but start to diminish as we age. This is one reason why young children often react very strongly to sour and bitter flavors

Roughly, how many papillae are on our tongues?

there are more than 200 papillae on our tongues and each contains 50 to 100 taste receptors (taste buds).

What are supertasters?

People who are enormously sensitive to certain tastes because they have more papillae than others

most people are medium tasters

What is the evolutionary perspective on taste? ( sweet, salty, sour, bitter, savory, fatty)

Sweet = energy source & (generally) safe to eat

Salty = sodium is essential for physiological processes (proper cellular functioning)

Sour = potentially for foodborne illness (foods are beginning to spoil and are unsafe to eat, or they have not fully ripened and reached their peak of nutritional content)

Bitter = potential poison

Umami (Savory) = proteins to grow and repair tissue

Oleogustus (Fatty) = energy and vitamin metabolization (fat-soluble Vitamins: A,D,E,K)

Processing of Pain

Nociceptors/pain receptors are the sensory receptors that are sensitive to painful stimuli and transmit that information to the brain. These signals are sent once an individual's absolute threshold for pain is reached. People's pain thresholds vary and can be influenced by biology, culture & socialization, as well as mindset

Nociceptors/ pain receptors

the sensory receptors that are sensitive to painful stimuli and transmit that information to the brain

gate-control theory

the theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological gate that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The gate is opened by the activity of pain signals, traveling up small nerve fibers, and is closed by activity in larger fibers, or by information coming from the brain. Brain to spinal cord messages can also close the gate.

How can chronic pain be treated?

As a result, chronic pain can be treated by gate-closing stimulation, such as massage, and by mental activity, such as distraction

Phantom Limb Sensation

when an individual no longer has a body part, but has sensation in the area of the missing body part.

Vestibular Senses

the sensations of movement, balance, and body position( quizlet def)

The vestibular sense, aka equilibrium, is responsible for detecting changes in the position and movement of the head. it relies on the vestibular system, located in the semicircular canals of the inner ear.

The vestibular sense helps us maintain balance, coordinate movements, and stabalize our gaze during head movements

Kinesthetic Senses

senses that provide information about movement, posture, and orientation

the sense that enables us to perceive the position, movement, and orientation of our own body parts.

Sensation

the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive information from our environment. The detection, transduction, and encoding of stimulus energies. Receiving the information.

Perception

the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting the sensory information that we receive from our environment and converting it into meaningful information in our brains. Processing the information; making it meaningful

Bottum-Up Processing

It's building overall understanding from small, individual details; analysis that moves from the parts to the whole; also called data-driven processing.

Progression from individual elements to the whole- Perception, starting with details and building a whole.

Top-Down Processing

Using pre-existing knowledge, experience and context to interpret information. If there is a letter missing from a word or a word missing from a sentence, top-down processing allows you to "fill in the blanks" Progression from the whole to the individual elements. I l_ve A_ Psy_ho_og_!

Perception guided by experiences, expectations, and prior knowledge

Schemas

mental framework, or cognitive structure, that organizes and interprets information that we store in our memories. Our experiences build these schemas or mental file-cabinets of understanding, which we store in our brains

Assimilation

Whenever we experience something new, we interpret this information according to our current schemas and fit it in and file it away with what we already know. This process is called assimilation

Accommodation

Sometimes, our schemas are limited in their abilities to take in and file away new experiences, and they must be adjusted or modified to correctly make sense out of the new experiences and information we are presented with. This process of modifying or changing our schemas is known as accommodation

Gestalt Psychology

a school of thought that focuses on how the human mind naturally organizes sensory information into meaningful wholes, rather than the specific individual parts

What are the significant principles of Gestalt Psychology?

Closure, Figure and Ground, Proximity and Similarity

What is Closure in the context of Gestalt Psychology?

The mind tends to fill in incomplete shapes to perceive them as a whole

We fill in gaps to perceive a complete image

What is Figure & Ground in the context of Gestalt Psychology?

This principle emphasizes the distinction between the main object (figure) and its background (ground).

What is Proximity in the context of Gestalt Psychology?

Objects close to each other are perceived as a group

Things close together are grouped as a unit

What is Similarity in the context of Gestalt Psychology?

Similar elements are perceived as belonging together. (Side note: a column arranges data vertically from top to bottom, while a row arranges data horizontally from left to right.)

Attention

the process of consciously focusing on a particular stimulus or aspect of something that is being experienced. Ultimately, attention is an interaction of sensation and perception that is affected by the external environment and our internal memories, experiences, and expectations

selective attention

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular, narrow/specific stimulus, while simultaneously filtering out or disregarding other, less relevant stimuli. This process allows for deeper processing of the attended information.

The ability to focus on one stimulus while ignoring others.

The Cocktail Party Effect

This is an example of selective attention, where an individual is able to focus on one particular conversation or sound amidst many other competing conversations and background noises in a loud environment. The mention of your name in this situation acts as a stimulus that breaks through the attention filter, allowing you to notice it even when you are focused on another conversation.

Inattention

the failure to focus conscious awareness on a particular stimulus or aspect of our immediate environment

Failing to notice something because attention is elsewhere.

Change Blindness

The phenomenon where an individual fails to notice significant changes to something they are actually focusing on, when those changes occur during a brief interruption or disruption (like a blink, a camera cut in a film, or when one object blocks or obscures another).

Change blindness is failing to see a change between an earlier state or version of something we are focusing on and a later state or version of the same thing.

ex: when I didn't notice the person changed in the video

Binocular Cues of Retinal Disparity and Convergence

Binocular cues are depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of both (two) eyes. Binocular depth cues utilize images from each eye to give us the ability to perceive (make sense out of) depth.

retinal disparity- each eye receives a slightly different image due to its unique angle of view; the brain compares these two images (retinal disparity) to perceive depth

Convergence- the inward turning of your eyes when looking at an object close to you; the closer an object the greater the convergence

monocular cues

distance cues available to either eye alone

include:

- relative size

- relative clarity

-texture gradient

-linear perspective

-interposition

Relative clarity

the concept that addresses how things that are farther away from us appear hazy or blurry, while those that are closer appear with greater detail and clarity

Relative size

objects of the same physical size appear larger when they are closer and smaller when farther away.

texture gradient

the detail of a surface appears to change with distance; closer objects show more texture.

linear perspective

parallel lines appear to converge with distance

Interposition (overlap)

this is when an object closer to us cuts off all or part of the view of a more distant object.

Visual Constancies

As images in our visual field change, our perception of an object or objects we are looking at remains the same. Due to such things as variations in light, the changing angles that we view things from, and the movement of objects, our brains are capable of understanding that the physical things we are viewing do not, themselves, change.

This can be best understood by exploring the concepts of Size Constancy, Shape Constancy, and Color Constancy.

apparent motion

Apparent motion is our mistakenly perceiving something as being in motion, even when it isn’t actually moving. Examples include the Stroboscopic Effect and the Phi Phenomenon.

cognition

all of the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, communicating, and remembering information

metacognition

our awareness and understanding of how we think; it is the conscious analysis of our thought processes. Enraging in metacognition can help us discover errors in our thought processes and problem solving approaches

cognitive perspective

the psychological school of thought that focuses on how our thoughts shape and influence our behaviors

Perceptual Sets

expectations that produce a readiness to process experience in a predetermined way

Concepts

mental groupings of similar objects, events, ideas or people that help us organize and understand information. Concepts make it easier for us to think and communicate. Sports, School Subjects, Fruits, and Movies are all examples of concepts.

Prototypes

the typical or best examples of a category (concept) that help us quickly identify and categorize new objects, ideas, or people by comparing them to this specific mental representation

Algorithms

problem-solving strategies that involve step-step, methodical procedures that guarantee a correct solution. Algorithms are great for accuracy, but they can be time consuming

Representativeness Heuristics

a mental shortcut people use to judge the likelihood of something based on how closely it matches a stereotypical example or one's prototypical example

think stereotypes or personal prototypes

Availability Heuristic

A mental shortcut used to make judgements based on how easily examples come to mind. This often leads to us overestimating the statistical likelihood of events due to recent, vivid, or emotionally charged examples that we quickly recall

In short, it is when you see an example of something and think it will happen to you, causing you to overestimate the likelihood of it really happening

Mental Set

a cognitive approach to solving problems and challenges with a method that has been successful for us in the past, even if they no longer work. going back to the habits you developed already as a result of initial success

What is a limitation of mental sets?

Mental sets can prevent you from exploring more efficient solutions. Also, if something changes and you continue to use the mental sets, you are screwed

Priming

a technique in which the introduction of one stimulus influences how people respond to a similar, or related stimulus. Priming activates associated ideas or concepts stored in our memories.

Priming is like giving your brain a tiny, hidden "head start" on a task.

ex of priming:

An example often provided in cognitive psychology would be with word meanings or semantics. For instance, a person is shown the word "Doctor" on a flash card, then asked to identify which of the following words is a real word: "Nurse" or "Bread."

Even though both examples are actual words, the majority of people would choose Nurse over Bread, because of the connection to Doctor.

Framing

the way that information is presented to us can influence how we perceive and respond to the information. Framing frequently affects how people come to decisions and make judgements about information presented to them. This is very common in advertising

Gambler's Fallacy

the mistaken belief that the probability of a random event changes based on a previous outcome or experience. A person who falls prey to the gambler’s fallacy ignores the true statistical probability of the outcome.

Ex of Gambler's Fallacy:

the coin lands on heads 5 times in a row, so I think that the next time I flip the coin it will land on heads. This is an incorrect way to think bc each time the chances of getting heads or tails remains 50/50 every time

sunk cost fallacy

a cognitive bias that leads people to continue investing time, money, or effort into something they've already invested in, even when it's not in their best interest

ex:

Marissa starts watching a movie her AP Psychology teacher suggested, but realizes after 30 minutes that she's bored by it and does not find it enjoyable. Instead of stopping, she thinks, "I've already watched half an hour of this movie, so I might as well finish it." (Of course, she also thinks her AP Psychology teacher makes great decisions and clearly knows what he's talking about.) So, Marissa continues watching to the end, but never finds the movie interesting or worth his time.

This is an example of the sunk-cost fallacy because Marissa keeps watching the movie since she feels that she's already "invested" time, even though stopping the movie and doing something more enjoyable would ultimately be a better choice for her.

Creativity

he ability to produce ideas that are both novel (new) and valuable. Sometimes the idea can be new to the world, such as when an invention is created, or it can be new to an individual when engaged in problem solving.

Divergent Thinking

generating multiple solutions to an open-ended problem.

Brainstorming for new ideas or thinking of various uses for a common object are examples of divergent thinking.

Convergent Thinking

the process of narrowing down the possibilities to the single best solution. Think process of elimination and trial and error

narrowing the multiple ideas down to the single best one!

Functional Fixedness

our inability to see other uses or functions for objects that are used or designated for specific purposes