PSYC 101 Exam 3

Coma

completely unaware, asleep, no response

Vegetative state

alternates between eye-open and eye-closed state, periods of wakefulness, no reliable response to external stimuli

Minimally conscious state

Responds somewhat reliably, but not consistently to sensory stimuli

Locked in syndrome

fully aware but is unable to demonstrate as they can't move voluntary muscles

Hemispatial neglect

a failure to attend to stimuli on the opposite side of space to a brain lesion

Egocentric neglect

Failure to detect objects in one side in relation to self

Allocentric neglect

Failure to detect all contralateral sides of every object

Motor neglect

failure to move one side of body despite no paralysis

Tactile neglect

inattention to tactile stimuli on one side of the body

Auditory neglect

inattention to sound on one side of space

Blindsight

a condition in which a person can respond to a visual stimulus without consciously experiencing it

ADHD

difficulty paying attention, hyperactiveness, day dreaming, easily distracted (sustained and selective attention)

Brain's default network

a circuit in the brain that is active when the brain is at rest while processing internal stimuli

Selective attention

A cognitive process to focus on one aspect of environment

Change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

inattentional blindness

failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention

Dichotic listening task

A task in which a person hears two or more different, specially recorded messages over earphones and is asked to attend to one of them.

Dichotic listening task findings

knows existence of message, gender of speaker, superficial nature of speech

cocktail party effect

Ability to concentrate on one voice amongst a crowd

Attentional blink

a brief slow down in mental processing immediately after processing another event

Divided attention

paying attention to more than one thing at a time
(task-switching, with exception of tasks that had sufficient practise and knowledge)

Multitasking

performing multiple tasks at the same time
(only possible when parallel processing is used: attention to colour and direction movement simultaneously - ventral and dorsal stream are separate)

Task switching

Ability to switch attention rapidly between two tasks that require the same type of processing or conscious attention (with some loss of information)

Day dreaming

a state of consciousness in which a seemingly purposeless flow of thoughts comes to mind

dynamic unconscious

Freud - Active system of our memories, deep desires, and the struggle to control them

Repression

Freud - ejection of unacceptable thoughts and memories (kept in unconsciousness)

Freudian slip

a verbal mistake that is thought to reveal an unconscious belief, thought, or emotion

Cognitive unconscious

all the mental processes that give rise to a person's thoughts, choices, emotions, and behaviour even though they are not experienced by the person.

Dual processing theory

A theory stating that the mind is composed of both conscious and unconscious activity

Dual processing theory components

System 1: unconscious, automatic
System 2: rational, intentional

Stroop effect

Interference caused by conflicting information, caused by automatic processing

Stroop experiment

Facilitation condition (black letters), neutral condition (corresponding colour font), inference condition (interfering colour font), reading is an automatic process

Priming

when response to a stimulus is influenced or facilitated by recent experience with that stimulus or a related stimulus

Subliminal perception

the registration of sensory input without conscious awareness due to short durations and subtlety

Meditation

Produces relation by guiding attention

Concentrative meditation

focusing attention on one thing

Mindfulness meditation

letting thoughts flow freely, paying attention to them but trying not to react to them

Meditation on health

lower blood pressure, reduced stress, change in hormones responding to stress

Meditation on cognitive processing

Brain electrical activity: positive emotional state, better attentional performance, enhanced immune system, brain's default mode network

Sleep: Pineal Gland

melatonin

Sleep: hypothalamus

Detects light to regulate release of melatonin

5 stages of sleep

stages 1-4 and REM sleep stage

Insomnia

recurring problems in falling or staying asleep (self induced, secondary, primary_

Sleep apnea

a disorder in which the person stops breathing for brief periods while asleep

Somnambulism

occurs when a person arises and walks around while asleep (usually during slowwave sleep)

Narcolepsy

uncontrollable sleep attacks

Sleep paralysis

the experience of waking up unable to move

Night terrors

abrupt awakenings with panic and intense emotional arousal

Altered state of consciousness

a form of experience that departs significantly from the normal subjective experience of the world and the mind

Characteristics of dreams

intense emotion, illogical thought, fully formed sensations, uncritical acceptance, difficulty recalling

Manifest content

Freud - topic/superficial meaning of dream

Latent content

Freud - underlying meaning of dream

Activation-synthesis model

dreams are produced when the brain attempts to make sense of random neural activity that occurs during sleep

Dream: Amygdala

activated, explains intense emotions

Dream: Visual association areas

activated, explains vivid imagery in dreams

Dream: prefrontal cortex

low activity, explains uncritical acceptance and illogical thought

Dream: Motor cortex

active, brain stem is also active to inhibit actual movement

Philosophical zombie problem

hypothetical being that responds to stimuli but may not have inner experience

p-zombie problem: problem of other minds

fundamental difficulty we have in perceiving the consciousness of others

Chinese room problem

No matter how many messages you receive and respond to, you still do not know Chinese. Elusiveness of conscious experience

Turing test

a test for intelligence in a computer, requiring that a human being should be unable to distinguish the machine from another human being by using the replies to questions put to both.

Encoding

process of transforming what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory

Semantic encoding

the encoding of meaning

Semantic judgements

meaning of words

Rhyme judgements

sound of words

Case judgements

appearance of words

Brain areas for semantic encoding

lower left frontal lobe, inner left temporal lobe

Visual imagery encoding

process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures

Effectiveness of visual imagery encoding

similar to semantic encoding (preexisting knowledge), two mental placeholders (visual and verbal)

Brain areas for visual imagery encoding

occipital lobe

Organisational encoding

process of categorising information according to the relationships among a series of items.

Brain areas for organisational encoding

Left frontal lobe

Storage

process of maintaining information in memory over time

Sensory memory

storage that holds sensory information for a few seconds or less

Iconic memory

a fast-decaying store of visual information (decay in 1sec)

Iconic memory test

a grid of letters is flashed on screen for only 1/20th of a second, difficult to recall individual letters. But if prompted to remember a particular row immediately after the experiment there is high accuracy.

Echoic memory

a fast-decaying store of auditory information (decay in 5sec)

Short term memory

holds nonsensory information for 15-20 seconds, capacity of 7 items

Long term memory

storage that holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

Rehearsal

the process of keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it

Serial position effect

our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list

Primacy effect

remembering the first items in a list

Recency effect

remembering the last items on a list

Chunking

combining small pieces of information into manageable units held in STM

Working memory

active maintenance of information in short-term storage

Working memory model

Visuo-spatial sketchpad: visual images
Phonological loop: verbal info
Episodic buffer: integrates visual and verbal info (gateway to LTM, learning)
Central executive: coordinates subsystems and episodic buffer (awareness and mental manipulation)

Prospective memory

remembering to do things in the future

Hippocampus in memory

related to STM

Anterograde amnesia

an inability to form new memories

Retrograde amnesia

an inability to retrieve information from one's past

Hippocampal region index

Hippocampal region serves as an index to link separate info into one memory

Long term potentiation (LTP)

communication across the synapse between neurons strengthens connection, making further communication easier

Consolidation

process by which memories become stable in the brain

Short term consolidation

operates over seconds/minutes

Long term consolidation

Operates over days/weeks/months/years

Reconslidation

Process whereby memories become vulnerable to disruption when recalled, requiring them to be consolidated again.

encoding specificity principle

retrieval cues that match original information work better

State-dependent retrieval

information tends to be better recalled when the person has the same inner state during encoding and retrieval

transfer-appropriate processing

memory is likely to transfer from one situation to another when the encoding and retrieval contexts of the situations match