UMN: PSY 1001 - Midterm 1

chapter 1-4 of 'Interactive Psychology: People in Perspective by James Gross, Toni Schmader, Bridgette Martin Hard & Adam Anderson'

Jake has been diagnosed with anxiety. A Cognitive psychologist would attribute the origin of Jake's anxiety to which of the following:

how Jake interprets or thinks about his experiences.

Professor Williams wants to know what students do during class. She decides to have someone come in once a week to her classes to record the types of nonverbal behaviors that students engage in while listening to her lectures. This would be an example of which kind of study?

Naturalistic observation

After the neurotransmitter molecules are released into the synapse, \______________________________.

the neurotransmitter molecules bind to a receptor.

If sensory signals are constant, then the neurons gradually stop signaling this constant input. This phenomenon represents...

adaption

Riding his bicycle, Rob loved how the world smelled. The smell of grass and flowers were being converted from chemical molecules into neural information by receptors in Rob's nose in the process known as \_________.

transduction

Random assignment is important for experimental designs because it allows researchers to assume that...

members of the control and experimental groups are comparable to one another.

f researchers are interested in examining the lightest color someone can see, they are looking at establishing an/a \_____________________ threshold.

absolute

Greg was a world-class diver until he hit his head on the diving board during one of his dives. He now has difficulty coordinating the movements required for various tucks and rotations. It is likely that when he hit his head on the diving board, Greg damaged his \______________.

cerebellum

The lens in the eye \______________.

bends entering light rays and focuses them onto the retina

Blake was at a Vikings v Packers game, and even though people wearing green and yellow jackets were spread fairly evenly throughout the stands, he still perceived all the people in green jackets as a single group of visiting Packer fans. Blake's perception is most consistent with the Gestalt principle of...

similarity

Broca's area is found in the \_______________ suggesting that producing speech involves executive sequencing and fine motor control.

frontal cortex

Morgan's math teacher gives weekly quizzes during class. All of the items on the quizzes are designed to assess students' understanding of crucial math concepts, and Morgan is a good student who studies consistently for the class. However, her scores fluctuate a great deal. Some weeks she gets every question right, and some weeks she gets more than half wrong. Given these inconsistent scores, you might wonder whether the quizzes are \_________.

reliable

Which theory of color vision accounts for afterimages?

opponent process theory

If you stare at this image for about 30 seconds, and then look at a white background, you will see a flag that is red, white and blue. This illusion is known as \_________________________.

a color afterimage

The wave frequency of a sound is what we refer to as its \__________.

pitch

Emma wants to know if dog owners are more extroverted than cat owners. She goes to her local animal shelter and asks the first 50 people who have a cat or dog to participate in a survey that measures their level of extraversion. She then compares scores between the two groups. The 50 people Emma surveyed at the animal shelter are a...

sample

What is a Sensation?

The stumi your body senses You see somthing. Maybe light, sound, and pressure, and convert them into neural signals that are sent to the brain)

What lobe responses to sound

Temporal lobe

What lobe is responsible for touch/ temp

perietal lobe

What is perception?

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events

What is the absolute threshold?

Minimum amount of stimulus for a receptor to react.

Sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation

perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change

What is transduction?

Converting a stimulus from the environment into an electrical signal that can be processed by the nervous system/ brain

What are the different ways to measure perception?

Cognition is the knowledge you have and sensation is what you fell. They combine to form perception

What is the difference between detection and discrimination?

Detection: I hear a sound, Discrimination: these sounds are different

When do neurons fire action potentials?

receive a sufficient amount of excitatory input from other neurons or sensory receptors, An action potential is a rapid change in the electrical potential of a neuron that results in the rapid propagation of an electrical signal along the neuron's axon. The firing of an action potential is a binary event, meaning that it either occurs or it doesn't.

What are response biases?

Did you hear the sound?

Conservative: less likely to respond

Liberal: More likely to respond

What is signal detection theory?

discerning between important and unimportant stimuli. Can have hit, miss, false alarm, or correct rejection

SDT: False Alarm

signal was not present, Pt pushed button/ said it was present

SDT: Correct Rejection

Signal was not present, Pt says it wasn't present

What is Weber's Law?

The just noticeable difference (JND) in the intensity of a

stimulus is proportional to the intensity of the standard stimulus.

What is adaptation?

less responsive to stimuli over time. It occurs when an individual is exposed to a constant or unchanging stimulus

What are our five main senses?

sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell

What are the properties of waves?

What are the stages of visual information processing?

Basically you detect then Perception of the info.

More details:

Detection: This is the first stage of visual processing where light enters the eye and activates the photoreceptor cells.

Transduction: This stage involves converting the light energy into neural signals that can be transmitted to the brain.

Encoding: In this stage, the neural signals from the eye are transformed into a format that can be processed by the brain. This involves the extraction of basic features such as color, shape, and texture.

Transmission: The encoded information is transmitted from the eye to the brain via the optic nerve.

Analysis: Once the information reaches the brain, it is analyzed by different regions of the visual cortex, where it is interpreted and integrated with information from other senses.

Perception: The final stage of visual information processing is perception, where the brain creates a coherent and meaningful interpretation of the information it has received. This interpretation is based on past experiences, knowledge, and expectations, and can be influenced by context and attention.

Antimony of the Eye

iris, pupil, rods and cones. Look this up

Where are the light receptors?

Attached to the retina, then rods and cones

What are the two types of light receptors?

Rods and cones

What is accommodation?

the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina

What is the fovea?

the fovea is the region of the retina with a high density of cones. It is where you focus when you read this block of text

What is the distribution of rods and cones in the retina and how does this affect vision?

Cones are more precise. Rods are for broad (a ball be thrown at you really fast) more periphery.

ROD vision (in the periphery) is more sensitive to low levels of

light than CONE vision (in the fovea).

What is the periphery?

peripheral visual

What is the blind spot?

the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a "blind" spot because no receptor cells are located there

What is the trichromatic theory of color vision?

all the colors humans perceive result from combinations of the outputs of photoreceptors for three primary colors

What is the Opponent-Process theory of color vision?

one member of the color pair suppresses the other color. yellowish-greens and reddish-yellows, but we never see reddish-green or yellowish-blue color hues

What are the properties of sound waves?

Where does transduction occur in the auditory system?

hair cells of the inner ear. Sound waves enter the ear and cause the hair cells to move. This movement generates an electrical signal, which is then transmitted to the auditory nerve hair cells act as transducers, converting the mechanical energy of the sound waves into electrical energy

How do we perceive pitch? What is place theory?

we hear different pitches because different areas of the cochlea respond to higher and lower pitches.

What is the Ponzo illusion and how does it work?

human perceptual system to perceive objects in a stable and consistent way, despite changes in their sensory input.

objects as having the same shape, size, etc

What is the difference between monocular and binocular depth cues? What are these different cues?

Binocular cues : eye convergence, disparity, and yielding depth

eye convergence, disparity, and yielding depth

What is Gestalt Psychology

the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

What is psychology? How can psychology be studied from different levels of analyses?

Scientific study of the mind, brain and behavoir. Levels of analysis include societal, behavioral, mental etc

What discipline did Psychology come from?

Philosophy

What are the aims of the different theoretical perspectives that have shaped psychology?

Theoretical frameworks include six primary schools of thoughts that influence modern psychology. Structuralism, Behaviorism, cognitive, psychoanalysis, human and positive psychology.

How do psychologists study behavior?

scientific method

What is a scientific theory?

well-tested explanation that unifies a broad range of observations

What is a hypothesis?

An educated guess

What are variables?

Any measurable conditions, events, characteristics, or behaviors that are controlled or observed in a study.

What is the difference between a manipulated and measured variable?

Measured variable are things you can't control i.e. hight, year in school. And manipulated is things you can i.e. puzzle difficulty, exam color.

What are operational definitions?

Determine definition in a operation. IE, happiness: scale of 0-10

What is a sample? What is a population?

Population- large group of interest

Sample- small group that we measure

What is a biased sample?

A sample that is not equally representative of the population.

What is random sampling? What is biased sampling?

RS: all member of a population have an equal chance of being selected. Very likely to be similar to the population but not guaranteed. BS: all in lecture vs not in lecture

How do naturalistic observational studies work?

Researcher makes observations of people/animals in their normal environments

What is the case study approach?

detailed observation on one person

How can we use correlational research to predict behavior?

relationships between variables

What are correlational coefficients?

A number that says how related the variables are

How can we interpret the strength and direction of a correlation?

R value. Basically the slope of a scatter plot. R\=1 positive correlation ie iv up dv up. R\=-1, negative correlation ie iv up dv down.

What is a confound?

anything that affects a dependent variable and that may unintentionally vary between the experimental conditions of a study

What are the differences between experimental and correlational research?

experimental: IV affect on DV

Correlational : you measure variables without manipulating any of them

What is random assignment?

assigning participants to experimental and control groups by chance, thus minimizing preexisting differences between the different groups

How is random assignment different from random sampling?

random assignment: sorting the sample participants into control and experimental groups

RS: selecting members of a population to be included in your study

What is validity?

One word, Many contexts. In this cause means correctness

What is external validity? What is internal validity?

EV: extent to which the findings of a study can be generalized to other populations, settings, or situations

IV: results of a study can be attributed to the treatment or intervention being tested

What is a construct?

An abstract construct that we cant observe directly. Ie memory, happiness

What is construct validity?

If you want to measure happiness how efficient is the construct. If it correlates then it is high. Amount of free time to happiness: construct validity low.

What is a p-value?

Prodility that you would obtain the difference just by chance.

What is meant by statistical significance?

Less than .05 is IV affects DV

What are the core ethical principles of research with humans?

Maximize the benefits to society but minimize the harm to research participants. Autonomy\= willing participants, Justice\= affects all participants equally

What is reliability? How is that different from validity?

stability of a measurement scale, i.e. how far it will give the same results on separate occasions

What does it mean when results are valid?

how well the results among the study participants represent true findings among similar individuals outside the study (Validity)