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101 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
distal stimulus
the real object in the world outside of us

we have no direct access to the distal stimulus
proximal stimulus
energies that actually reach us
- ex: light reflecting off a person, odor emanating from a rotten egg
difference threshold
the smallest stimulus change an observer can reliably detect
- if stimulus is changed by this amount, it produces a just-noticeable-difference
Weber
size of difference threshold is a constant fraction of the stimulus we are comparing it to
- so, the proportional change, not absolute change, is what matters

Weber's law = (change in I)/I = C
- I = intensity of standard stimulus
- change in I = amount that must be added to produce jnd
- C = constant

the smaller the Weber fraction, the more sensitive the modality
Fechner
strength of sensation grows as a logarithm of stimulus intensity

S = k log I
- S = subjective magnitude
- I = physical intensity of stimulus
- k = constant, depends on Weber fraction
decision criteria
rule for when to say yes, when to say no
- people differ in how they handle uncertainty
signal-detection theory
experimenter presents a target stimulus on some trials, but no stimulus on others. test subject reports back whether or not the stimulus was present

relationship between subject's responses and characteristics of the stimuli is influenced by the subject's expectations and wishes

two factors at work: sensitivity, response bias
if people differ in how sensitive they are to signal, they will differ in proportion of incorrect, correct

if people differ in their decision criteria (response bias), they will differ in their proportions of yes and no
signal-detection theory: possible responses & manipulation of cut-off
hit: responds yes, stimulus present
correct negative: responds no, stimulus absent

miss: responds no, stimulus present
false alarm: responds yes, stimulus absent

to minimize misses, lower the cutoff of decision criteria, but risk increasing the number of false alarms
to minimize false alarms, raise the cutoff, but risk increasing the number of misses
signal-detection theory: payoff matrix
anticipated consequences determine what decision is made
signal-detection theory: decision process
since there is no such thing as zero stimulus (our bodies are always active), we must distinguish between background noise and actual, external stimuli

- relative frequency of each type of decision outcome is influenced by sensitivity and response biases, affected by expectations and motivations governed by payoff matrices
doctrine of specific nerve energies & specificity theory
Johannes Muller

differences in experienced quality are caused not by differences in the stimuli but by the different nervous structures which these stimuli excite

- specificity theory: different sensory qualities are signal by different neurons
-- labeled lines
wavelength & the visible spectrum
distance between the crests of two successive waves
- major determinant of perceived color
- symbol: lambda

visible spectrum: lambda = 400nm (violet) to lambda = 700nm (red)
the eye: cornea, lens, iris
focus incoming light (like a camera lens)
- cornea: fixed shape, bends light rays so they end up properly focused
- lens: shape can be adjusted
- iris: contracts or dilates to control the amount of entering light
the eye: photoreceptors & the duplex theory
duplex theory: two separate systems give us a huge range of detectable light

cones: plentiful in the fovea (a small region at the center of the eye)
- 6mil total in eye
- code for color
- fine, detailed spatial discriminations

rods: in the periphery
- 120mil total in eye
- much more sensitive to low levels of light, over a broader range of wave frequencies
- nighttime vision
the eye: optic nerve
axons of ganglion cells (connected to receptors) converge to form a bundle of nerve fibers
--> lateral geniculate nucleus --> cortex

where the optic nerve exits the eye, there are no receptors - this is the blind spot
the eye: photopigments
allow transduction of light energy into a neural signal
- in rods: rhodopsin
- in cones: three different pigments, crucial to color discrimination

photoreceptors fire more strongly in response to changes in the incoming stimulation (any stimuli that have been around for a while have already been inspected, any information they offer has already been detected and analyzed)
vision: contrast
change in brightness typically marks a visual boundary, which defines an object's shape
vision: lateral inhibition
activity in one region tends to inhibit responding in the adjacent regions
- excited photoreceptor transmits excitation to other cells that will relay this information to brain
- excited receptor stimulates neurons that extend sideways along retina, make contact with neighboring cells and inhibit their activation

see pg 41.1
classification of color (3 dimensions)
hue - distinguishes blue from red from green, varies with wavelength
brightness - differentiates black from white, greys in between
saturation - "purity" of a color (the more grey (or black or white) mixed with a color, the less saturated it is
color: Young-Helmholtz (trichromatic) theory
3 different kinds of cones with different patterns of sensitivity (based on wavelength)

red light stimulates long-wavelength-preferring receptors; blue - short; green - medium
- all other colors derived from mixtures of these 3 experiences
color: opponent-process theory
output from cones is processed by another layer of neural mechanisms that recode the signal in terms of color pairs (red-green, blue-yellow)
- the two members of each pair are antagonists -- excitation of one automatically inhibits the other
color: color mixing, additive & subtractive
if a color is mixed with its complement in appropriate proportions, the result is achromatic (they "cancel" each other out)
- only applies to mixing of lights (full sets of wavelengths are reflected - additive mixing), not paints/pigments (where the only wavelengths reflected are those not absorbed - subtractive mixing)
feature detectors
specialized detector cells that respond to certain characteristics of the stimulus and no others

there are cells responsible for detecting some complex shapes, especially those that are especially significant to a species
perception: distance cues
indicate how far an object is from the observer, or how far it is from other objects in the world

binocular disparity: two eyes have slightly different views
- depth perception, for items relatively close by
perception: monocular distance cues (interposition, linear perspective/relative size, texture gradients, motion)
interposition: since light cannot travel through opaque objects, our view of one object is blocked by another object, which we conclude is in front of object 1

linear perspective/relative size: distant objects produce a smaller retinal image than nearby objects of the same size

texture gradients: pattern of continuous change, with elements of texture growing smaller and smaller (more dense, closer together) as they become more distant

motion: projected images of nearby objects move more than those of distant ones
perception: motion (motion detectors, apparent movement, compensation for eye movement, induced movement, motion parallax)
motion detectors are direction specific: fire only if stimulus moves across receptive field from right to left, vice-versa

apparent movement: appropriately timed changes in position of the object are interpreted as movement (films)

compensation for eye movement: when the brain signals eye muscles to move, it computes retinal displacement such a movement would produce and then cancels out this amount

induced motion: object that encloses another tends to act as frame
- surrounded object seen as moving, frame seen as still

- motion parallax: points closer to us than target of gaze appear to be moving in a direction opposite our own; points further away appear to be moving in the same direction we are
perception: form
differences in simple features jump out immediately (find the O among the Vs)

recognize stimuli even in presence of variability (recognize a giraffe whether its sitting, standing, laying)

recognize partially occluded figures (square and circle, even though circle covers edge of square)
perception: gestalt & parsing
organization is an essential feature of all mental activity
- our sense of a shape derives from the properties of the whole, taken as a coherent unit

parsing: segregating the scene into constituent objects
- based upon principles of similarity, proximity, good continuation (preference for contours that continue smoothly along their original course), subjective contours (separation of object (figure) from setting (ground))
perception: the classical approach
perceiver: active role in organizing and interpreting stimulus input
- forms as specific, unambiguous, determinate in form
- effects of context draw on knowledge and expectations perceiver brings to a situation

constancy: distinguish changes in proximal stimulus brought about by shifts in our viewing circumstances from changes created by actual alterations in the world
- size, shape, brightness, position
perception: the process-model approach: feature nets
hierarchy network of detectors, with detectors in each layer serving as triggers for detectors in the next layer
perception: bottom-up processing
- aka data-driven processes
- determined largely by incoming stimulus information (like law, all the reasons why X is true)
perception: top-down processing
- aka knowledge-driven processes
- chain of events is influenced by one's beliefs and expectations, as well as by incoming data
perception: priming
accuracy and efficiency of perception are increased if the perceiver is somehow prepared for the upcoming stimulus
geons
identify an object's features and then use these to identify the component geons and their relationships; consult our visual memory to see whether there is an object that matches up
parvo cells
- smaller
- more prevalent than magno cells
- blanket the entire retina
- sensitive to color differences
- perception of pattern and form
magno cells
- larger
- found mostly in retina's periphery
- respond strongly to changes in brightness
- detection of motion and the perception of depth
perception: "what" and "where" systems & the binding problem
"what": temporal cortex, identification of visual objects

"where": parietal cortex, where an object is located

binding problem: how does the nervous system manage to bind together elements originally detected by separate systems?
perception: attention: selection by physical orientation
adjust sensory machinery to provide one of the most direct means of selecting inputs, so we can focus on the stimuli we care the most about and ignore those we don't
- ex: eye movement
perception: attention: selective looking
when the target is defined by a combination of processes, search process is usually serial rather than parallel
- if pressed to proceed rapidly, tends to result in errors (illusory conjunctions)
-- ex: finding red O among red and green Vs and Os
perception: attention: absence of attention
in the absence of attention, people often make errors about how features should be combined to make larger wholes
- so, combining of features is a different step from detecting features; and combining features requires attention
perception: attention: priming
selectively facilitates the perception of expected stimuli, simultaneously hindering the perception of anything else
- the priming influences how a perceiver allocates his processing resources
perception: attention: cocktail party effect
a noisy, busy environment is tuned out in order to focus on someone you're conversing with, but you will pick up on someone else in the room saying your name
- so, you are still processing all the "tuned-out" activity
- also, primed to name (since we respond to it all the time)
perception: attention: dichotic listening experiment
two different stories coming through a set of headphones, person could shadow (repeat) story coming through one ear, but could not retell story in the other ear

but, details of story in the "unconscious" ear influenced the subject's interpretation of story they paid conscious attention to
- "stones at the bank" in conscious ear; "river" or "money" in unconscious ear
habituation
decline in tendency to respond to stimuli that have become familiar due to repeated exposure
- narrows the range of stimuli that elicit harm
- relies on what the organism remembers about its previous experiences

seaworm & light & seagull example
classical conditioning: terminology
unconditioned response (UR): product of an organism's biology
- triggered by unconditioned stimulus (US) independent of any learning

conditioned response (CR): product of learning

conditioned stimulus (CS): initially neutral
- only comes to elicit CR after some presentations of CS followed by US
classical conditioning: acquisition of conditioned responses
presentation of US simultaneously with or immediately subsequent to the CS reinforces the ability of CS to elicit CR
- recognition that one stimulus (CS) consistently predicts another (US); CR measures whether or not/how strongly the CS-US relationship has been made
classical conditioning: measuring the strength of the CR (3)
- response amplitude
- probability of response
- response latency (time from onset of CS to CR - the shorter the latency, the stronger the CR)
classical conditioning: second-order conditioning
once the CS-US relationship is solidly established, the CS can serve as a reinforcer to condition yet further stimuli
(bell --> meat powder; square --> bell --> meat powder; square --> meat powder)
classical conditioning: extinction, reconditioning, spontaneous recovery
CR will gradually disappear if CS is repeatedly presented by itself (without the US)

reconditioning: with further learning trials after extinction, reconditioning typically proceeds more quickly than the original conditioning did
- CR is not really abolished, just masked

spontaneous recovery: "extinguished" CR will reappear after a rest interval
classical conditioning: stimulus generalization, generalization gradient
animals will respond to a range of stimuli, provided stimuli are sufficiently similar to original CS

generalization gradient: the greater the difference between the new stimulus and the original CS, the weaker the CR
classical conditioning: discrimination, CS+ and CS-
responding to stimuli that have been reinforced and not responding to those that have been unreinforced
- errors of overgeneralization are identified and corrected

- CS+: positively reinforced "variant" of CS
- CS-: negatively reinforced "variant"; signals "no US", response to CS- is opposite the response to CS+ (inhibits response elicited by CS+)
classical conditioning: CS as signal
conditioning is best when CS precedes US by some optimum interval (about .5 second)
- CS signals to body that US is coming, gives body time to prepare
classical conditioning: contingency
if US is more likely to occur in the presence of CS than in the absence of CS, conditioning occurs
classical conditioning: the role of surprise, the blocking effect
animal arrives to each learning trial with certain expectations, based upon what it has experienced in the past
- if expectations are wrong, US will be a surprise, and it is time to adjust
- learning only occurs when events are not in line with expectations

blocking effect: no surprise = no no new information = no learning
- stage 1: hissing --> shock; hissing becomes CS for fear response. stage 2: hissing + light --> shock. stage 3: light produces no fear response.
classical conditioning: fear
conditioned emotional response: fear tends to disrupt other activities; by measuring the disruption, we measure the fear

CS+ elicits fear response; CS- inhibits fear response

response suppression: animal learns CS+ signals shock, presses lever less often during CS+ (fear disrupts action)
classical conditioning: treating phobias
present CS (phobia source, like cliff or snake) without US over and over again to extinguish the phobia
classical conditioning: compensatory responses
repeated pairings of CS and US cause compensatory mechanisms to activate in order to "repair" or prevent the disruption caused by the normal effect of the danger the stimulus signals
- ex: increased blood sugar production upon sight of needle containing sugar-processing insulin
- similar situation in drug addiction
instrumental conditioning: law of effect
as trials proceed, tendency to produce unsuccessful responses weakened, while originally-weak tendency to produce the correct response gradually grows in strength
- ex: cats in puzzle box
operant behavior
instrumental responses operate on the environment to bring about some change that leads to some consequence
- operant followed by a positive consequence is more likely to be emitted in the future; operant followed by a negative consequence is less likely to be emitted in the future
instrumental conditioning: positive reinforcement
presentation of an award that is an appetitive stimulus (goal object the animal currently prefers given its present motivational state)
instrumental conditioning: negative reinforcement
termination or avoidance of what is an aversive stimulus for the animal given its present motivational state
instrumental conditioning: S
in instrumental conditioning, external stimuli are discriminative (give animal cues of how to act), positive (S+) or negative (S-)

CS vs S
CS+: no matter what you do, US is coming
S+: if you respond now, you'll get rewarded
CS-: no US is coming
S-: there is no point in responding right now
instrumental conditioning: shaping
successive approximations: at each step, animal naturally varies its behavior somewhat, allowing us to reinforce just those variations we prefer
- eventually, animal learns a complex response
instrumental conditioning: delay of reinforcement
the greater the delay between the execution of a response and the delivery of a reward, the less and less effective the reward becomes in strengthening that response
instrumental conditioning: conditioned reinforcement
a neutral stimulus gains value as it is repeatedly paired with some other, already established reinforcer
- conditioned reinforcement gradually loses its powers if it is repeatedly unaccompanied by some primary reinforcement (similar to extinction)
instrumental conditioning: schedules of reinforcement
rules that determine when and under what conditions a response will be reinforced

fixed-ratio (FR): specified number of responses in order to receive each reward
- requires gradual increase in FR, beginning with continuous reinforcement (FR 1)
- the higher the FR, the longer the pause after reward before animal will start next round

variable-ratio (VR): number of responses varies from one reinforcement to the next
- uncertainty over when next reinforcement will come leads to increased response

fixed-interval (FI): reinforcement becomes available only after a certain interval has passed since last reinforcement
- ex: checking the mail
- response rate is very low immediately after reinforcement, becomes faster and faster as end of interval approaches

variable-interval (VI): actual interval varies unpredictably from trial to trial
instrumental conditioning: punishment
aversive stimulus following a response will tend to suppress the response on subsequent occasions
- the shorter the delay between the response and the punishment, the stronger the suppressive effect of punishment
instrumental conditioning: avoidance learning
a response will be negatively reinforced if it forestalls the occurrence of an expected aversive stimulus
instrumental conditioning: latent learning
learning that takes place without any corresponding change in behavior
- ex: rats do not show they have learned the layout of a maze box (that is, developed a cognitive map) unless expressing this knowledge matters for them (reaching food)
instrumental learning: act-outcome relationships
animals acquire knowledge about the specific relationships between their actions and the outcomes of those actions
- ex: rats learn lever --> pellets, chain --> sugar water (--> nausea). rats will stop pulling chain and only press lever
learning: continguity and contingency
contiguity: things that are closer together in time are more closely associated
- best learning occurs if CS occurs very closely before US

contingency: CS/response needs to be informative/predictive of US/reward
- absence of contingency --> learned helplessless: sense that one has lost control over one's environment causes one to give up trying (dogs, shock, wall example)
classical conditioning: belongingness
some stimuli belong together, others do not
- ex: for rats, illness associated wtih taste, not external stimuli (light); quail, who choose food based on appearance, became averse to color that predicted illness, rather than taste
neural basis for learning: aplysia actions
1. if siphon lightly touched, no response
2. initial learning trial: siphon lightly touched, tail shocked (tail shock causes retraction of gill and siphon)
3. eventually, light siphon touch causes retraction
neural basis for learning: presynaptic facilitation
1. motorneuron in charge of retraction: "strong", in that any tail shock (or poke) will activate motorneuron
2. neural pathway that conveys information about touch to siphon to motorneuron 1: "weak" in that it will ordinarily not activate motorneuron 1 unless touch is exaggerated
3. if an action potential enters synapse 2, "window of susceptibility" in which it is possible to convert synapse 2 into a "strong" one if touch is shortly followed by shock
4. neuron that conveys shock to motorneuron 1 also reports to presynaptic terminal of synapse 2; if action potential arrives, strengthens presynaptic terminal's ability to release neurotransmitter upon siphon touch
5. so, presynaptic facilitation of light touch information to release enough transmitter to activate motorneuron 1
neural basis for learning: long-term potentiation
one neuron stimulates another over and over again, postsynaptic neuron becomes more sensitive, more likely to respond to this input in the future
neural basis for learning: structural changes
growth of dendritic spines - docking stations for synaptic contact of a neuron with its neighbors --> new lines of communication
learning: predictive relationships
classical conditioning: between CS and US

instrumental conditioning: between response and reward
memory: working memory
holds information for fairly short intervals
- capacity: 7 plus/minus 2 pieces of information
memory: long-term memory
materials are stored for much longer intervals, perhaps lifetime (like the "bookshelves" of our mind)
- capacity: enormous, approaching infinity
memory: explicit memory
- aka declarative (what)
- episodic (diary); semantic (worldly knowledge)
- hippocampus
- conscious memory
- top-down processing
memory: implicit memory
- aka nondeclarative, "memory without awareness"
- procedural (how)
- in unconscious memory (you don't actually pull every step of riding a bike into your memory every time you do it)
- bottom-up processing
- usually specific to a particular stimulus format (case-sensitive)
memory: recognition and recall
recognition: subject is asked to indicate whether or not the item/set has been encountered before

recall: subject is asked to reproduce an item or set of items presented on an earlier occasion
memory: primacy effect
objects presented at the beginning of a list are quite likely to be recalled
- people can lavish attention on each piece of information if there are not too many
memory: recency effect
last few pieces of information presented are likely to be recalled
- no further information is received that would displace these
memory: stages
- encoding: stimulus input
- consolidation (memory trace): transforming information into familiar form (engram)
-storage: putting information into our long-term memory in an organized way
-- presynaptic facilitation, long-term potentiation, creation of new synapses
- retrieval: depends upon how good memory trace is (how effective consolidation is)
memory: what are the most effective ways of storing information?
- organization: put things in related spaces in brain
- elaborative rehearsal: attach meaning to information (as compared to rote/mechanical rehearsal
- chunking: increases efficiency of 7 +/- 2 magic number
memory: factors affecting survival time of memories
- decay: survival time of short-time memory is relatively short
- maintenance rehearsal: lengthens survival time indefinitely as information is continually reentered into working memory (repeating a phone number)
- displacement: newly entering items push out relatively old information
-- retroactive inhibition
memory: retroactive and proactive interference
retroactive interference: subsequent information bumps off the information that was in working memory before it
- learn list A, then do a task: recency effect is decreased

proactive interference: information prior to an event makes it difficult to remember the first information of a list
- do a task, learn list A: primacy effect is decreased

- words in the middle of a list get both retroactively and proactively inhibited, are less likely to be remembered
memory: chunking
requires depth of processing, role of understanding

depth of processing stresses schema (individual's conceptual framework brought to the situation)

organization efforts to recode newly encoded information into understandable chunks (CIANYUFBIIBM into CIA-NYU-FBI-IBM)
- elaborative rehearsal - letter combinations now have meaning
memory: amnesias
retrograde amnesia: inability to remember an event
- especially recent events (older memories have had more time to consolidate, less vulnerable?)

anterograde amnesia: inability to form new memories

both types affect explicit memory
memory: retrieval cues (& what makes them successful)
stimulus that opens the path to the memory through reminding us of the memory

successful retrieval cues recreate the mental context in which the original learning occurred (context reinstatement)
memory: encoding specificity
what is placed in memory is a record of the event as understood from a particular perspective or perceived within a particular context
memory: mnemonics
techniques establish memory connections
- ex: verse, method of loci (learner visualizes each item in a different spatial location)
- imagery must link item to each other, or to things the learner already knows
memory: retention interval (& its role in forgetting)
time that elapses between learning and retrieval

Ebbinghaus' forgetting curve: recall decreases & forgetting increases as retention interval grows longer
memory: forgetting (causes)
erosion of memory (decay): presumably caused by normal metabolic processes that wear down memory traces until they fade & disintegrate

interference from new learning: the more intervening events, the harder it is to remember earlier ones
- retroactive and proactive inhibition

retrieval failure: forgotten material is misplaced (can be recovered with effective cues - context reinstatement)
- tip-of-the-tongue: incomplete forgetting - hints of properties of memory, information may spontaneously come to mind later
memory: failure: intrusions and overwriting
misinformation effect: misinformation fed by other sources often incorporated into memory, so that a person ends up misremembering the original event, mistakenly including bits suggested by misinformant
- intrusion: misinformation used to insert new ideas into memory
-- malfunction of encoding specificity
- overwriting: misinformation used to replace one (accurate) memory with another (fictional) one (information in working memory is extremely vulnerable to corruption)
- source confusion: episodes related to each other will be well-connected in memory, difficult to keep separate which bits of information belonged to which episode
memory: failure: intrusions from generic knowledge
we blur together our recollection of an episode with our broader knowledge of how episodes of that type typically unfold
- elements that fit neatly within schema (conceptual framework individual brings to situation) are easily remembered
- elements somewhat at odds with the framework are distorted or omitted
- elements that were absent but are typically present in episodes of that type are added to event in memory
memory: failure: misplaced familiarity
familiarity (general sense that stimulus has been encountered before) vs. recollection (recall of context in which stimulus was encountered)
memory: repetition priming, fragment completion tasks
repetition priming: familiarity increases credibility (how to become famous overnight)

fragment-completion task: success is much more likely if word was encountered recently (filling out crossword - g_r_f_e)
memory: flashbulb memories
especially vivid memories, typically of highly distinctive, unexpected, strongly emotional events
- can be inaccurate
- long-lasting effect may be a result of rehearsal (telling story to people)
memory: repressed memories (& questionability of them)
memories are hidden from view by mechanisms designed to shield a person from psychological harm

questionability:
- therapist bias: bias toward childhood issues being cause of adult problems - therapists may use leading questions
- hypnotism: a person that is hypnotized usually tries to please the person that is hypnotizing them (so they may say things that are false just because they think it is what the hypnotist wants to hear)
- unlikely that something so serious would be repressed for so long