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 1st, 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 1st 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