Psych 1 Midterm

Front 1

frequency

Back 1

number of vibrations of a sound wave per second

PITCH: our perception of frequency, or how high/low a sound is

Front 2

amplitude

Back 2

intensity of a sound wave

LOUDNESS: our perception of amplitude

Front 3

cones

Back 3

detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail

Front 4

rods

Back 4

become active under low light conditions for night vision - more sensitive photoreceptors than cones, but provide no information about color and sense only shades of gray

Front 5

the fovea

Back 5

an area of the retina where vision is clearest and there are no rods at all

Front 6

blind spot

Back 6

a location in the visual field that produces no sensation on the retina because the corresponding area of the retina contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light - where the optic nerve exits the nerve

Front 7

receptive field

Back 7

the region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the firing rate of that neuron (for eyes - where light falls)

Front 8

trichromatic color representation

Back 8

the pattern of responding across the three types of cones provides a unique code for each color - red, green and blue

Front 9

color-opponent system

Back 9

pairs of visual neurons work in opposition : red-sensitive cells against green-sensitive, blue-sensitive cells against yellow-sensitive

Front 10

retinex theory

Back 10

color is constructed by our brain and depends on multiple circumstances

Front 11

ventral stream

Back 11

the "what pathway" - represents an object's shape and identity

Front 12

dorsal stream

Back 12

the "where pathway" - identifies location and motion of an object

Front 13

visual-form agnosia

Back 13

the inability to recognize objects by sight

Front 14

binding problem in perception -

Back 14

how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features

Front 15

illusory conjunction

Back 15

a perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined

Front 16

feature integration theory

Back 16

focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus, but is required to bind those individual features together

Front 17

monocular depth cues

Back 17

aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye.

linear perspective - parallel lines seem to converge as they recede into distance

texture gradient - size of pattern elements and distance between them grows smaller as surface recedes when you view a uniformly patterned surface (broken dirt death valley ish)

interposition - when one object partly blocks another you can infer that the blocking object is closer than the blocked object

relative height in the image - objects that are closer to you are lower in your visual field, while faraway objects are higher

Front 18

binocular disparity

Back 18

the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth

Front 19

complexity (of sound waves)

Back 19

sound quality

TIMBRE: a listener's experience of sound quality or resonance

Front 20

cochlea

Back 20

a fluid=filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction

Front 21

auditory perception

Back 21

outer ear funnels sound waves toward middle ear, which in turn send vibrations to the inner ear, which contains the cochlea

depends on both place code and temporal code, which together cover the full range of pitches that people can hear. our ability to localize sound sources depends critically on the placement of our ears on opposite sides of the head

Front 22

haptic perception

Back 22

active exploration of the environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands

Front 23

realism

Back 23

john locke

“The reason why we perceive things is that they’re really there!”

Front 24

idealism

Back 24

immanual kant

"perception without conception is blind"

“If you didn’t know what you should see, you wouldn’t see anything at all."

Front 25

The Mueller-Lyer Illusion

Back 25

the arrows on both sides of a line and the backwards arrows on both sides of a line - we see the line with arrows on the ends to appear shorter because it looks like wall corners from a distance

Front 26

taste and smell

Back 26

the chemical senses

smell: pheremones (mating attraction, bonding - between parent/child)

taste: 5 types of taste buds - each has several specialized receptors for detecting that taste (salty, sour, bitter, sweet, umami - savory)

Front 27

three key functions of memory

Back 27

encoding - the process by which we transform what we perceive, think, or feel into an enduring memory

storage - the process of maintaining information in memory over time

retrieval - the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored

stick it in
keep it there
kick it out

Front 28

sensory memory

Back 28

hold sensory information for a few seconds or less. color, brightness, pitch, texture

-iconic (repeating what you've just seen)
-echoic (repeating what you've just heard)

Front 29

iconic memory vs. echoic memory

Back 29

fast-decaying store of visual information

fast-decaying store of auditory information

Front 30

short-term memory

Back 30

holds nonsensory information for more than a few seconds but less than a minute - like someone telling you a phone number and repeating it back

Front 31

rehearsal

Back 31

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

Front 32

chunking

Back 32

combining small pieces of information into larger clusters or chunks to help memory

Front 33

working memory

Back 33

active maintenance of information in short-term storage -

Front 34

long-term memory

Back 34

holds information for hours, days, weeks, or years

Front 35

anterograde amnesia

Back 35

inability to store new long-term memories - ex. 50 First Dates

Front 36

retrograde amnesia

Back 36

a loss of memory for events before the time of brain damage (loss of old memories)

Front 37

explicit memory

Back 37

when people consciously retrieve past experiences

- semantic memory: facts and general knowledge
- episodic memory: personally experienced events

Front 38

implicit memory

Back 38

past experiences influence later behavior and performance, even though people are not trying to recollect them and are not aware that they are remembering them (without conscious recall)

- episodic (memories of past events, moments)
- procedural: motor and cognitive skills
- priming: enhanced identification of objects or words

Front 39

methods of testing memory

Back 39

- free recall
- cued recall
- recognition
- savings method

Front 40

free recall

Back 40

simplest method of testing - asks you to produce a response, i.e. essay or short answer tests

Front 41

cued recall

Back 41

you receive significant hints about the material, i.e., you are given a picture of the brain to help you recall the different brain regions

Front 42

recognition

Back 42

you are offered several choices and asked to select the right one, i.e., multiple choice tests

Front 43

savings method

Back 43

method for observing learning, compares the speed of original learning to the speed of relearning, in other words, how quickly people can relearn previously studied information

Front 44

levels-of-processing principle

Back 44

how easily we can retrieve a memory depends on the number and types of association we form - associations establish retrieval cues
- the more ways you think about the material, the deeper you will process the information and the easier it will be to remember later

Front 45

Encoding Specificity Principle

Back 45

the associations you form at the time of learning will be the most effective retrieval cues

Front 46

State-Dependent Memory

Back 46

the tendency to remember something better if your body is in the same condition during recall as it was during the original learning.

Front 47

reconstructing past events

Back 47

- memory is constructed during the original experience and reconstructed upon retrieval

- reconstruction is influenced by both surviving memories and our expectations of what must have happened

- hindsight bias: the tendency to mold our recollection of the past to fit how events later turned out

Front 48

proactive vs. retroactive interference

Back 48

proactive: old stuff influencing new stuff - your significant other calling you the ex's name

retroactive - new stuff influencing old stuff - not being able to remember old house's phone number

Front 49

amnesia

Back 49

loss of memory

- results from many kinds of brain trauma or damage, including damage to the hippocampus

- may be temporary following trauma or more permanent, depending on extent of damage

- anterograde (inability to remember what happens AFTER amnesia-inducing event)
- retrograde (inability to remember what happens BEFORE amnesia-inducing event)

Front 50

Korsakoff's syndrome

Back 50

damage to the prefrontal cortex due to prolonged deficiency in vitamin B

- usually a result of chronic alcoholism
- causes apathy, confusion, amnesia

Front 51

Alzheimer's disease

Back 51

characterized by increasingly severe memory loss, confusion, depression, disordered thinking, impaired attention
- occurs mostly among the elderly

Front 52

infant amnesia (or childhood amnesia)

Back 52

relative lack of declarative memories before the age of 4 or 5
- no conclusion as to why this is

Front 53

hypermnesiac

Back 53

exceptionally exact or vivid memory

- Professor Rajan Mahadevan - remembers 31,000 digits of pi

Akira Haraguchi - 100,000 digits - broke record in 2006

Front 54

priming

Back 54

an enhanced ability to think of a stimulus, such as a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus

Front 55

failings of memory

Back 55

- transience (forgetting with the passage of time)
- absent-mindedness
- blocking (a failure to retrieve information that is available in memory even though you are trying to produce it - tip of the tongue phenomenon)
- memory misattribution (assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source - DONALD THOMSON - accused of rape, rapee had been watching a show hosted by Donald Thomson just before she was assaulted and misattributed her memory of Thomson's face to the rapist)
- suggestibility (the tendency to incorporate misleading information from eternal sources into personal recollections)
- bias
- persistence (the intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget - emotional arousal - painter experienced near-fatal fire, paintings turned into dark meditations with only black, orange and ochre)

Front 56

prospective memory

Back 56

remembering the do things in the future

Front 57

flashbulb memories

Back 57

detailed recollections of when and where we heard about shocking events (Michael Jackson died)