Cognitive Psychology and Neuroscience Practice Flashcards

A single parseable JSON array containing question and answer flashcards based on cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and memory lecture notes.

What was the unconditioned stimulus paired with in Ivan Pavlov's digestive studies?

The unconditioned stimulus is paired with the conditioned stimulus.

Who is credited with performing one of the first behavioral psychology experiments?

Franciscus Donders

Who established the first laboratory of scientific psychology?

Wilhelm Wundt

Who discovered that most newly learned information is lost during the first hour?

Hermann Ebbinghaus

What approach to psychology explained perception as the combination of small elementary units called sensations?

Structuralism

What is the measurement of how long it takes to respond to a single stimulus?

Simple Reaction Time

What term describes the shift in psychology from behaviorism to explaining behavior in terms of the mind?

Cognitive Revolution

What is the resting potential charge of a neuron?

$$-70\,mV$$

Which brain structure branches out from the cell body to receive electrical signals from other neurons?

Dendrite

What condition reflects the inability to recognize faces despite being able to recognize objects?

Prosopagnosia

What region of the temporal lobe is associated with understanding language?

Wernicke's area

What specific type of cell in the visual cortex detects information about angles, movement, and shape?

Feature detectors

What term describes the brain's ability to change its structure through experience?

Experience-dependent plasticity

What is the 'inverse projection problem'?

The task of determining the object that caused a particular image on the retina.

What theory explains that some of our perceptions result from unmindful assumptions we make about the environment?

Unconscious inference

Which Gestalt principle states that every stimulus is perceived in its most uncomplicated form?

Principle of simplicity (Pragnanz)

In perception, what is the difference between the 'What' and 'Where' pathways?

The 'What' pathway (ventral) is associated with identifying objects, while the 'Where' pathway (dorsal) is associated with locating objects in space.

What is 'speech segmentation'?

The process of perceiving individual words within the continuous flow of a language signal.

What phenomenon explains the ability to focus on one stimulus while filtering out all others, such as hearing your name at a party?

Cocktail party effect

How does 'load theory of attention' explain the ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli?

The ability to ignore task-irrelevant stimuli depends on how much processing capacity is currently being used for a task.

What is the Stroop effect?

A task where a person has to respond to one aspect of a stimulus, like the ink color, and ignore another aspect, like the word's meaning.

What is the difference between covert and overt attention?

Overt attention involves moving the eyes to look at a stimulus, while covert attention involves shifting focus without moving the eyes.

In Treisman's feature integration theory, what occurs during the 'focused attention stage'?

Independent features of an object are combined to perceive the object as a whole.

How many individual pieces of information did George Miller suggest can be processed via working memory?

$$7 \pm 2$$

Which component of Baddeley's working memory model holds and processes verbal and auditory information?

Phonological loop

What is 'chunking'?

A process of combining small units of information into larger, more meaningful units to increase memory capacity.

Which brain region is heavily involved in forming new long-term memories and was famously removed from patient H.M.?

Hippocampus

What is the difference between episodic and semantic memory?

Episodic memory involves specific personal experiences, while semantic memory involves general facts and knowledge.

Which term describes the enhanced memory for words presented at the beginning of a list?

Primacy effect

What type of amnesia is characterized by the inability to form new memories after an injury?

Anterograde amnesia

What is 'procedural memory' and what type of memory is it?

Memory for doing things that involves learned skills, and it is a type of implicit (nondeclarative) memory.

According to the levels of processing theory, which level leads to the most effective retrieval?

Deep processing

What is the 'testing effect'?

The enhanced performance on a memory assessment caused by having been previously assessed on the material.

What is the 'spacing effect'?

The advantage in memory performance caused by short study sessions separated by breaks rather than one long session.

What is the difference between synaptic and systems consolidation?

Synaptic consolidation involves rapid structural changes at nerve junctions (minutes), while systems consolidation involves the gradual reorganization of brain circuits (longer time).

What is 'long-term potentiation'?

The increased firing that occurs in a neuron due to prior activity at the synapse.

What is a 'saliency map'?

A picture of a scene that indicates the physical properties of areas and objects that capture attention through bottom-up factors.

What occurs during 'reconsolidation'?

When a memory is retrieved, it becomes reactivated and must be transformed again to be stored safely.

Which brain region is specifically activated by pictures of the human form, excluding faces?

Extrastriate body area (EBA)

Which functional network in the brain responds when a person is not involved in specific tasks?

Default mode network

What is 'transitional probability' in the context of language?

The likelihood that one speech sound will follow another within a word.

What is 'double dissociation'?

A process used to determine that two functions (like face recognition and object recognition) are served by different mechanisms.