Untitled Flashcards Set

·       Sensation vs perception

o   Sensation: Raw data that the body receives from the environment (Touch taste, smell, hearing, sight)

o   Perception: The interpretation of what you get from senses.

·       Sensory transduction: Occurs in neural receptors within sensory organs; Physical stimuli tuned into electrical messages

·       Sensory information and the thalamus (What does the thalamus have to do with
sensory information?)

o   All sensory information is relayed through the thalamus to the visual cortexes.

·       Bottom-up vs Top-down processing

o   Bottom-up processing: Building perception from individual sensory inputs; what you see immediately

o   Top-down processing: Interpretation based on prior knowledge, experiences, and expectations

·       Components of the eye (what do they do?)

o   Iris: A colored pigmented ring of muscle that controls the size of the pupil

o   Pupil: A tiny transparent hole in the center of the eye, that changes its size to let light into the eye

o   Cornea: Acts as the eyes’ outermost lens; protects the eye, and helps control the entry of light into the eye.

o   Lens: Transmits and focuses light onto the retina, for a clear image; also is responsible for accomodation

§  Accommodation: Changes the shape of the lens

o   Rod and Cones

§  Rods: Receptor cell that processes low light info; processes green very well (why night vision goggles are green) not bright, works best when light is dim.

§  Cones: Processes highest detailed vision + color vision; there’s one for Green, Red, and Blue.

o   Optic Nerve: Carries signals from your retina to your brain (Visual Information)

§  Blind spot: A part of the eye that doesn’t process anything

·       Visual pathway (from the visual field to the visual cortex)

o   What structures are involved? How is the processing of the visual field
distributed?

§  Visual information travels from the Retina -> Optic Nerve -> Optic Chiasm -> Thalamus (LGN) -> Primary Visual Cortex (V1) -> Visual Association Cortex (V2-V8)

·       Trichromatic Theory vs Color Opponent Theory

o   Trichromatic Theory: You can only truly see red, green, and blue, and everything other color you see simply builds off of those 3.

o   Color Opponent Theory: Opposing color receptor cells exist in the brain including: Red-Green, Blue-Yellow, Black-White.

·       Gestalt principles: Set of laws that describe how our brains organize visual information into meaningful wholes rather than individual parts.

o   Phi Phenomenon: You see apparent movement when it’s not actually there (EX: Scoreboard text moving)

o   Figure-Ground Segregation: Identifying a figure from the background

o   Closure: Brain fills in an image that’s not there

o   Good Continuation: Brain assumes things like lines are present that aren’t

o   Similarity: Desire to group things together based on how similar objects are to each other

·       Pitch vs loudness

o   Pitch: Related to the frequency of a sound wave

o   Loudness: Larger sound = larger amplitude, and smaller sound = smaller amplitude.

·       Basilar membrane and its relation to high and low frequencies

o   Basilar Membrane: Tissue that vibrates for both high frequencies; stimulates hair cells

o   Apex Membrane: Tissue that vibrates for low frequencies; stimulates hair cells

·       McGurk Effect: An illusion that occurs when what’s heard doesn’t match what’s seen, leading to the perception of a new sound that sort of blends the 2 together.

·       Proprioception: Perception of where your body is located within your environment

·       Olfactory Bulb: Where receptors meet, and eventually combine to create the olfactory nerve

·       5 Basic Tastes: Bitterness, Sourness, Sweetness, Saltiness, Umami

o   Bitterness: Out in nature, this works as a warning against poisonous foods

o   Sourness: Warns of poison in a similar way to bitterness

o   Sweetness: A flavor indicating food is safe to eat

o   Saltiness: Helps with ingestion of sodium, and helps detect it in foods

o   Umami: Helps detect protein (MSG)

·       Learning: A change in how an organism behaves due to changes in the environment that were produced by their behavior.

·       Habituation vs sensitization

o   Habituation: When our behavioral response to a stimulus DECREASES overtime

o   Sensitization: When our behavioral response to a stimulus INCREASES overtime

·       Classical vs Operant Conditioning

o   Classical Conditioning: Occurs when an organism responds to a previously neutral stimulus paired with another, causing an automatic response.

o   Operant Conditioning: A learning process that uses positive and negative reinforcement to change behavior.

·       Stimuli and responses associated with classical conditioning (US, UR, NS, CS, CR)

o   Unconditioned Stimulus: Stimulus that elicits and automatic response

o   Unconditioned Response: Response elicited by an unconditioned stimulus

o   Neutral Stimulus: An environmental event that doesn’t produce a specific response

o   Conditioned Stimulus: A previously neutral stimulus, that now elicits a specific response after being paired with the unconditioned stimulus multiple times

o   Conditioned Response: A response elicited by the Conditioned Stimulus

o   You will need to be able to identify these in different examples.

·       Little Albert Experiment

o   Headed by John Watson and Rosalie Rayner, demonstrated classical conditioning by teaching a 9-month-old baby named Albert to fear a white rat through repeatedly pairing the rat with a loud, frightening noise

·       Extinction and spontaneous recovery

o   Extinction: Events following learned responses stop occurring, and that response sort of dies out.

o   Spontaneous Recovery: Occurs after a conditioned stimulus is presented alone sometime after the original introduction, leading to a weaker Conditioned Response

·       Generalization and Discrimination

o   Generalization: Takes place when the conditioned response is observed in the presence of a stimuli that was not present during training.

o   Discrimination: Occurs when the behavior that’s observed in the presence of stimuli used during training, is not used for other stimuli.

·       The Law of Effect: behaviors which produce a satisfying outcome are more likely to be repeated, while behaviors with unsatisfying outcomes are less likely to occur again

·       Positive vs Negative Reinforcement

o   Positive Reinforcer: Stimulus/event that, when Presented will Increase the likelihood that the behavior produced it will occur again in the future

o   Negative Reinforcer: A stimulus/event that, when removed will increase the likelihood that the behavior that produced its removal will occur again in the future.

·       Positive vs Negative Punishment

o   Positive Punisher: Stimulus/event that is Produced by the behavior and causes a decrease in the probability of the behavior occurring in the future

o   Negative Punisher: A stimulus/event the removal of which will decrease the likelihood of the behavior produced being repeated in the future

·       Shaping: Reward successive approximations of behavior/something close to the approved/target behavior until the desired outcome is met.

·       Conditioning and drug addiction: Contributions from both Clasiscal and Operant Conditioning

o   Initial Exposure to drug

o   Conditioned tolerance increases drug intake

o   Drug intake in a novel environment

·       Schedules of reinforcement

o   Continuous Reinforcement: Continual reward from doing an activity at 1^st, until the behavior is natural.

o   Partial Reinforcment

o   Ratio: The frequency of responses or number of times it occurs (like with slot machines not having a fixed moment of response, but eventually paying out)

§  Fixed (FR)

§  Variable (VR)

o   Interval: The timing of the Response

§  Fixed (FI)

§  Variable (VI)

o   Extinction: Ideal for eliminating a target behavior by never reinforcing it again

o   Extinction (Burst?): Behavior will be repeated until the organism stops

·       Social Learning: the process of learning new behaviors by observing and imitating others

·       Encoding: How information is acquired; transformation of real world info into electrical coding

·       Iconic vs Echoic Sensory memory

o   Iconic Memory: Brief sensory memory based on visuals.

o   Echoic Memory: Brief sensory memory based on what’s heard.

·       Dan Simons research

o   Discussion on attention within Brain Games video

o   Inattentional Blindness: We miss a lot of information with what happens around us without having a clue; failing to attend to information that’s right in front of us.

·       Short-term memory: Limited capacity of memories, and only remember things for 15 to 30 seconds;

·       Maintenance Rehearsal: short term memory can be kept for longer through this

·       Chunking: Consolidation of numbers to help your memory recollect the number pattern in an easier way

·       Working memory: Helps us store and manipulate information

·       Long-term memory: Holds memories that happened from a few minutes ago all the way to the beginning of your memory capacity; short-term memory is stored into long-term and can be retrieved into short-term memory.

o   Episodic vs semantic vs procedural memory

§  Episodic Memories: Memories of things that took place when you were present; Memories as they’re acquired

§  Semantic Memories: facts and words meanings; general knowledge; memories as they fade

§  Procedural/Non-Declarative/Implicit Memories: Memories for how to do something/perform procedures; can’t be expressed by words; Usually a subconscious type

·       Proactive vs Retroactive interference

o   Proactive Interference: Where older information is interfering with your ability to learn new information

o   Retroactive interference: where newer information interferes with the ability to recall/retrieve old information.

·       Serial position curve: a U-shaped graph that shows how well people remember items from the beginning and end of a list compared to the middle

o   Primacy and recency effect

§  Primacy Effect: Remembering the 1^st few words in a set of words easier

§  Recency Effect: Remembering the last few words in a set of words easier, since they’re still in short-term memory

·       Schema: Helps us organize info in long-term memory, which can include filling in gaps with false memories.

·       Hippocampus

o   Consolidation: Taking and transforming a new memory and turning a fragile memory into something stabilized, achieved through rehearsal, like with studying.

o   Reconsolidation: Whether its accurate or accurate, memory can be reactivated, or altered through reconsolidation.

·       Flashbulb memories (how do they compare to normal memories?): not a memory for the event itself, but rather the memory of what you were doing when it happened.    

o   Can differ from normal memories since they cane easily be influences by false memory

·       Elizabeth Loftus and false memories

o   How does question wording influence how people respond to questions?

§  subtle differences in phrasing can subtly steer answers by evoking certain emotions, creating ambiguity, or suggesting specific answers

o   How does suggestibility create false memories?

§  individuals can incorporate suggested or misleading information into their recall of events, leading them to believe they experienced something that did not actually happen. 

·       Anterograde vs Retrograde Amnesia

o   Anterograde Amnesia: Can’t remember new information

o   Retrograde Amnesia: Trouble remembering events that occurred prior to the trauma.

·       Patient H.M. and his memory after surgery

o   Both sides of his median temporal lobe (hippocampus) were removed, and he was no longer able to create new memories, or learn anything new. ‘HM’ so he could stay anonymous