Cognitive Psychology Exam 1

Front 1

action potential

Back 1

The cell fires - producting an action potential - a signal that moves down its axon and could potentially cause the next cell to fire.

Front 2

agnosia

Back 2

Cannot identify familiar objects.
ex: can feel a fork and know what it is, but can't tell it's a fork just by looking at it

Front 3

amodal completion

Back 3

surfaces complete behind occluding surfaces

Front 4

amygdala

Back 4

part of limbic system and has central role in emotion and evaluation of stimuli

Front 5

articulatory suppression

Back 5

prevents articulatory control process from recoding the visual information into phonological information

Front 6

attentional set

Back 6

prioritized stimuli
(underlined words, italics, highlighted)

Front 7

axon

Back 7

transmits signal away from cell body toward another

Front 8

attention

Back 8

the ability to selectively choose some stimuli for processing and ignore others

Front 9

Balint's syndrome

Back 9

bilateral parietal damage, can only see one object at a time
(also called - simultanagnosia)

Front 10

behavioral approach

Back 10

reactions to stimuli

Front 11

behaviorism

Back 11

study things only directly observed

Front 12

binocular rivalry

Back 12

when imput to one eye cannot be integrated with the input of the other eye, so the person is only aware of one eye's input at a time.

Front 13

bipolar cells

Back 13

receive input from photoreceptors and transmit output to rentinal ganglion cells

Front 14

bottom-up processing

Back 14

processes driven by intofrmation int he stimulus input

Front 15

hindbrain

Back 15

posture, balance, alterness. directly atop spinal cord.

Front 16

cerebellum

Back 16

largest area of hindbrain

Front 17

midbrain

Back 17

coordinating movements, realys auditory info

Front 18

forebrain

Back 18

largets in humans. surrounds all of midbrain and most of hindbrain

Front 19

Broca's area

Back 19

left frontal lobe - damage causes nonfluent aphasia.
can't produce speech

Front 20

wernicke's area

Back 20

damage causes fluent aphasia.
can produce speech but doesn't make sense

Front 21

aphasia

Back 21

disruption of language

Front 22

capgras syndrome

Back 22

think familiar people are imposters

Front 23

central executive

Back 23

director of working memory. needed for analysis

Front 24

cognitive psychology

Back 24

scientific study of knowledge. Empirical investigation of mental processes and brain structures in acquiring perception, attention, memory, language, knowledge, and decision making.

Front 25

cones

Back 25

photoreceptors able to see color. Concentrated in retina's fovea.

Front 26

contralateral control

Back 26

stimulation to left hemisphere leading to movement on the right side and vice versa.

Front 27

dendrites

Back 27

part of neuron that detect incoming signal

Front 28

dependant variable

Back 28

variable that the independant variable is compared to.

Front 29

double dissociation

Back 29

two processes or structures are truly distinct

Front 30

early-selection

Back 30

selective attention operates at an early stage of prpocessing, so that unattended inputs receive little analysis.

Front 31

EEG

Back 31

cap that vecords voltage changes occuring in scalp that reflect activity in brain underneath

Front 32

event related potential

Back 32

changes in EEG for brief period around defined event

Front 33

excitation

Back 33

one node activates another

Front 34

filter

Back 34

hypothetical mechanism that blocks potential distractors from further processing

Front 35

fixation

Back 35

helps people control eye position

Front 36

fovea

Back 36

center of retina - when you look at an object, you are lining it up with the fovea

Front 37

FFA (fusiform face area)

Back 37

a brain area specialized for the perception of faces

Front 38

geons

Back 38

basic shapes as building blocks of all complex 3-D forms

Front 39

Gestalt psychology

Back 39

similarity, proximity, good contiuation, closure, simplicity

Front 40

heuristic

Back 40

problem solving shortcuts

Front 41

high-load task

Back 41

hard tasks requiring lots of resources - early selection

Front 42

hippocampus

Back 42

involved in creation of long-term memory

Front 43

hypothalamus

Back 43

base of forebrain; control of motivated behaviors - basic needs

Front 44

iconic memory

Back 44

visual input

Front 45

inattentional blindness

Back 45

not being able to see something right in front of you because you attending to another stimulus

Front 46

independent variables

Back 46

variable that is manipulated

Front 47

information-processing approach

Back 47

mental events are step by step and each provides output for the next input

Front 48

inhibition

Back 48

activation of one node decreases activation of another

Front 49

introspection

Back 49

examinatino of your own thoughts and feelings

Front 50

late-selection

Back 50

selective attention operates at a late stage of processing, so that the unattended inputs receive considerable analysis

Front 51

level of processing

Back 51

how deeply newly learned materials are engaged; shallow processing involves thinking about material's superficial traits; deep processing involves thinking about what the material means

Front 52

limbic system

Back 52

structures important for learning and memory

Front 53

localization of function

Back 53

research endeavor of determining what specific job is performed by a particular region of the brain.

Front 54

long term memory

Back 54

storage system in which we hold all our knowledge and memories. contains memories that are not currently activated.

Front 55

low load task

Back 55

easy tasks requireing few resources

Front 56

method of loci

Back 56

mnemonic device - place things in a path

Front 57

modal model of memory

Back 57

architecture of memory

Front 58

neuropsychology

Back 58

branch of psychology concerneed with relation between various forms of brain dysfunctiona nd various aspects of mental functioning

Front 59

neurotransmitter

Back 59

chemical released by neurons in order to stimulate adjacent neurons

Front 60

occipital lobe

Back 60

visual projection area

Front 61

optic ataxia

Back 61

can't grab an object - eyes and hands have no coordination

Front 62

parietal lobe

Back 62

primary sensory projection areas and curcuits crucial for control of attention

Front 63

recall

Back 63

memory retrieval, need cue

Front 64

receptive fields

Back 64

portion of visual field to which a cell within the visual system responds

Front 65

recognition

Back 65

memory retrieval in which items to be rmembered are presented and the person must decide whether or nto the item was encountered in earlier circumstances

Front 66

recognition-by-components (RBC)

Back 66

object recognition, geons

Front 67

retina

Back 67

light sensitive tissue that lines back of eyeball

Front 68

retrieval

Back 68

locating info in memory and activating for use

Front 69

rods

Back 69

photoreceptors sensitive to low light and is black and white

Front 70

selective attention

Back 70

skill through which one focuses on one input or one task while ignoring other stimuli that are also on the scene.

Front 71

sensory memory

Back 71

holds onto input in "raw" sensory form - iconic memory for visual and echoic memory for auditory input

Front 72

shadowing

Back 72

a task in which research participants are required to repeat back a verbal input, word for word, as they hear it

Front 73

short-term memory

Back 73

also known as working memory

Front 74

single unit recording

Back 74

something is inserted into the brain to measure specific cell action potentials

Front 75

Stroop effect

Back 75

automaticity in which people asked to name color of ink instead of word itself. usually it is very difficult to filter out the word.

Front 76

synapse

Back 76

area that includes the presynaptic membrane of one neuron, teh postsynaptic membrane of another neuron, and the tine gap between them.

Front 77

temporal lobe

Back 77

primary auditory projection area, wernicke's area, and the amygdala and hippocampus

Front 78

thalamus

Back 78

lower portion of forebreain serves as a realy and integreation center for sensory info

Front 79

tip-of-the-tongue

Back 79

retrevial failure

Front 80

top down processing

Back 80

influenced by kowledge and expectations

Front 81

transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)

Back 81

magnetic pulses at specific locations on scap cause temporary disruption in brain region undereath.

Front 82

what vs where pathways

Back 82

what is dorsal; where is ventral

Front 83

word superiority effect

Back 83

participants are more accurate and more efficient in recognizing words (and wordlike letter strings) than they are in recognizing indivdual letters

Front 84

working memory

Back 84

storage system in which info is held while that info is being worked on. information is held here via active processes