Psychology Exam 2 Study Guide

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering neuroanatomy, brain states, sleep cycles, developmental psychology, and sensation and perception from the lecture notes.

Amygdala

Part of the limbic system involved in emotions, especially aggression and fear.

Hypothalamus

Part of the limbic system that regulates endocrine activity, controls hormone release, and is involved in reward/pleasure. It also controls the pituitary gland and (via the SCN) the pineal gland.

Hippocampus

Part of the limbic system known as the "gateway to memory" that enables the formation of new conscious memories.

Cerebral cortex

The outer layer of the brain responsible for higher forms of thinking, consisting of two hemispheres (left and right) and four lobes on each hemisphere.

Frontal lobes

Lobes located at the front of the brain involved in planning, creative thinking, and personality; they contain the motor cortex.

Motor cortex

Area located in the frontal lobes that controls voluntary movement.

Homunculus

A map of the motor (or sensory) cortex showing the relative amount of cortex devoted to different body parts (distorted "little person").

Broca’s area

Brain area (usually located in the left frontal lobe) involved in speech production.

Broca’s aphasia

Difficulty producing speech resulting from damage to Broca’s area.

Mirror neurons

Neurons that fire when observing another person doing something, as well as when performing the action oneself.

Parietal lobes

Lobes located at the top of the brain that contain the somatosensory cortex.

Somatosensory cortex

Area in the parietal lobes that receives information about touch sensation.

Occipital lobes

Lobes located in the back of the head that contain the visual cortex.

Visual cortex

Brain area in the occipital lobes that processes visual signals.

Temporal lobes

Lobes located on the sides of the head that contain the auditory cortex and (usually on the left) Wernicke’s area.

Auditory cortex

Brain area in the temporal lobes that processes sound.

Wernicke’s area

Brain area (usually located in the left temporal lobe) involved in language comprehension.

Wernicke’s aphasia

Problems with understanding language caused by damage to Wernicke’s area.

Plasticity

The flexibility of brain structures, enabling the brain to shift functions from damaged to undamaged areas (by forming new synapses and reorganizing) and to physically change its structure in response to learning.

Neurogenesis

The growth of new neurons.

Selective attention

Focusing consciousness on specific stimuli or aspects of stimuli while ignoring other information.

Inattentional blindness

Failing to detect available stimuli due to selective attention.

Change blindness

Failing to detect changes in stimuli due to selective attention.

Suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN)

A structure in the hypothalamus that is sensitive to changes in light, functions as the body’s biological clock, and controls the pineal gland.

Melatonin

A hormone that causes sleepiness, secreted by the pineal gland when directed by the SCN in darkness and suppressed in the presence of light and artificial lighting.

N-REM sleep

Non-rapid eye movement sleep consisting of three stages (N1, N2, N3) that occurs in cycles of approximately $90$ minutes.

N1 sleep

The light sleep transition stage in which hypnagogic jerks and hypnagogic hallucinations can occur.

Hypnagogic (hypnic) jerk

A sudden muscle twitch or feeling of falling that can occur in N1 sleep.

Hypnagogic hallucination

A vivid sensory experience that can occur while falling asleep (in N1).

N2 sleep

True sleep characterized by slowing brain activity and reductions in heart rate and muscle tension.

N3 sleep

Deep sleep characterized by further slowing of brain activity, difficulty awakening (being disoriented when awakened), and the release of growth hormones from the pituitary.

REM sleep

Rapid eye movement sleep characterized by brain waves resembling wakefulness, rapid or irregular physiological functions, dreams, and sleep paralysis.

Paradoxical sleep

Another term for REM sleep, referencing that the brain is highly active (like wakefulness) while the body is essentially paralyzed.

Sleep paralysis

A temporary inability to move that occurs during REM sleep to prevent acting out dreams.

Manifest content

In Freudian dream theory, the actual images appearing in the dream.

Latent content

In Freudian dream theory, the unconscious thoughts, feelings, and wishes behind the manifest content.

Activation synthesis theory

A dream theory asserting that the brain’s internally generated signals form dreams.

Heritability

The statistical estimate of the contribution of heredity to individual differences in traits and behavior.

Primitive reflexes

Automatic responses to specific stimuli present in infancy, such as sucking, rooting, Moro, grasping, and Babinski.

Schemes/schemas

Mental categories used by children to understand the world.

Assimilation

Fitting new information into the present system of knowledge (schema).

Accommodation

Changing an existing schema as a result of new information.

Sensorimotor stage

Piaget’s first stage of cognitive development (birth to $2$ years) involving looking, sucking, and touching, during which object permanence develops.

Object permanence

The understanding that something continues to exist even when it cannot be seen.

Egocentrism

Only using one’s own frame of reference, characteristic of Piaget’s preoperational stage.

Animistic thinking

Attributing life to objects, characteristic of Piaget’s preoperational stage.

Conservation

The understanding that physical properties do not change when appearance changes.

Reversibility

The idea that a stimulus that has been changed can return to its original state, mastered in the concrete operational stage.

Transitivity

Understanding how components in a series are related (if $A > B$ and $B > C$, then $A > C$), mastered in the concrete operational stage.

Formal operational stage

Piaget’s stage (age $11$ to adulthood) characterized by abstract and systematic reasoning and thinking about future possibilities.

Zone of proximal development

In Vygotsky’s theory, the level at which a child can almost perform a task independently; the difference between what a child can do alone and with assistance.

Scaffolding

A teaching process in which the teacher adjusts the amount of support to the child’s level of development.

Theory of mind

The understanding of how other people think, demonstrated in children through false-belief experiments like the Band-aid box study.

Secure base

A trusted caregiver from whom a child explores their surroundings and to whom the child returns for comfort.

Authoritative parenting

A parenting style high in warmth and high in control (child-centered, not overly demanding or hostile) that is linked to optimal outcomes such as higher grades and cooperativeness.

Authoritarian parenting

A parenting style low in warmth and high in control (controlling, demanding, restrictive, and emphasizing obedience) associated with lower grades and lower self-esteem.

Permissive parenting

A parenting style high in warmth and low in control (very few rules or restrictions) associated with children who are easily frustrated and have low self-control.

Uninvolved (neglectful) parenting

A parenting style low in warmth and low in control (least effective, most detrimental) associated with low self-esteem and emotional detachment.

Heinz dilemma

A scenario about a man deciding whether to steal an unaffordable drug to save his dying wife, used by Kohlberg to assess stages of moral reasoning.

Delay of gratification

The ability to forgo smaller, immediate rewards for greater rewards later, tested by Mischel in the marshmallow test.

Socioemotional selectivity theory

Carstensen’s model stating that in old age, people have smaller social networks, maintaining very close relationships while filtering out superficial ones.

Sensation

The process by which sensory organs obtain information about the environment and transmit it to the brain.

Perception

The organization of sensations into interpretations.

Transduction

The translation of physical energy into electrical signals.

Bottom-up processing

Processing that starts with raw sensory data that gets communicated to the brain.

Top-down processing

Processing that starts with the observer’s expectations and knowledge.

Absolute threshold

The minimal amount of stimulation that can be detected half of the time (detected $50\%$ of the time).

Difference threshold (jnd)

The smallest difference in intensity between two stimuli that a person can detect.

Weber’s law

The principle that for two stimuli to be perceived as different in intensity, the second must differ from the first by a constant proportion.

Sensory adaptation

The decreasing response of sensory receptors to unchanging stimuli because constant sensory input provides no new information.

Signal detection theory

The theory stating that perception results from both sensory information and making a judgment, depending on system sensitivity and response bias.

Response bias

A person’s readiness to report detecting a stimulus, influenced by expectations and motivation.

Gestalt approach

An approach to perception proposing that we perceive objects as wholes rather than as a sum of the individual parts.

Figure-ground perception

The inherent perceptual tendency to distinguish between an object (figure) and its background (ground).

Retinal (binocular) disparity

A binocular depth cue where each retina receives a slightly different image; greater disparity indicates an object is closer.

Convergence

A binocular depth cue involving the turning inward of the eyes toward a nearby object, where greater inward turning indicates a closer object.

Perceptual constancy

The interpretation of changing sensations as a perception that remains relatively consistent across light, angle, and distance.