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what is a synesthete?
- a person who has "joined sensation"
- signals that come from the sensory organs go to places in the brain where they weren't originally meant to be, causing the signals to be interpreted as more than one sensation
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sensation occurs when?
when receptors in the sense organs are activated, allowing various forms of outside stimuli to become neural signals in the brain
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the process of converting outside stimuli, such as light, into neural activity?
transduction
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the smallest difference between two stimuli that is detectable 50 percent of the time
- Just Noticeable Differences
- the amount of sugar needed to add to a cup of coffee
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Who was responsible for Just Noticeable Differences?
- Weber
- Webers law of JND means the whatever the differences between stimuli might be, it's always a constant
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the lowest level of stimulation that a person can consciously detect 50 percent of the time the stimulation is present
- absolute threshold
- a candle flame at 30 miles on a clear, dark night
- one drop of perfume diffused throughout a three-room apartment
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who is responsible for absolute threshold
gustav fechner
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stimuli below the level of conscious awareness
subliminal stimuli
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habituation
- tendency of the brain to stop attending to constant, unchanging information
- you don't "hear" the air conditioner until it turns off
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sensory adaptation
- tendency of sensory receptor cells to become less responsive to a stimulus that is unchanging
- garbage odors go away after a time
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difference between habituation and sensory adaptation?
- habituation, the sensory receptors are still responding to the stimulation but the lower centers of the brain are not sending signals to the cortex
- sensory adaptation differs because the receptor cells themselves become less responsive to an unchanging stimuli and the receptors no longer send signals to the brain
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constant movement of the eyes, these are tiny little vibrations people don't notice but keep the eyes from adapting to what they see
microsaccades or saccadic movements
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tiny packets of waves are called
photons, and they have specific wavelengths associated with them
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psychology-speaking, what are the three aspects to our perception of light?
brightness, color, saturation
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brightness is determined by
amplitude (how high or how low the wave is)
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color is determined by
- the length of the wave (measured in nanometers)
- long waves at the red end of the visible spectrum, shorter waves at the blue end
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saturation is the purity of the color people perceive. A highly saturated red would contain only what kind of wavelengths?
only red
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to see clearly, a single point of light from a source or reflected from an object must travel through the structures of the eyes and end up where and how?
on the retina as a single point
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light bends as it passes through substances of different densities, through a process known as?
refraction
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this protects the eye and focuses most of the light coming into the eye
- cornea
- has a fixed curvature
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second visual layer, after the cornea, it's a clear watery fluid that supplies nourishment to the eye
aqueous humor
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light from the visual image enters the interior of the eye through a hole called
- the pupil
- it's located in a round muscle called the iris, which can change the size of the pupil and let more or less light into the eye
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this is behind the iris, suspended by muscles. it finishes the focusing process begun by the cornea
- the lens
- in visual accommodation, the lens changes its shape from thick to thin enabling it to focus on objects that are close or far away
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the final stop for light within the eye
- the retina
- it's a light sensitive area at the back of the eye containing ganglion cells, bipolar cells and the rods and cones
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special cells that respond to various light waves
rods and cones - this is the part of the retina that actually receives the photos and turns them into neural signals to the brain
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bipolar cells
- they get the neural signals from the rods and cones - the signals go on to the ganglion cells
- called bipolar because they have a single dendrite on one end and a single axon on the other
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ganglion cells
their axons form the optic nerve
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the hole in the retina, or the place where all axons of the ganglion cells leave the retina to become the optic nerve
the blind spot
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light travels in a straight line through the cornea and lens, resulting in the image projected on the retina
being upside down and reversed from left to right as compared to the visual fields
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these are found all over the retina except the very center
rods
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these are sensitive to changes in light but not wavelength, so they only see in black, white and shades of gray. they're also responsible for peripheral vision
rods
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dark adaptation
occurs as the eye recovers its ability to see when going from a brightly lit state to a dark state
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these are the cells that help the eyes adapt to low levels of light
rods
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these cells adapt to the increased level of light, through light adaptation
- cones
- they're quicker at this than rods adapting to darkness
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receptors for visual acuity, responsible for color vision, work best in bright light
cones
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trichromatic theory
three types of cones: red, blue, green
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afterimages occur when?
- a visual sensation persists for a brief time even after the original stimulus is removed
- explained by opponent-process theory
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opponent-process theory
- four primary colors: red, green, blue and yellow
- colors are arranged in pairs, and if one member is strongly stimulated the other is inhibited
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color blindness is caused by
- defective cones in the retina of the eye
- color deficient more accurate - people have two types of cones working and can see many types of colors
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wavelengths are interpreted by the brain as
frequency or pitch (high, medium, low)
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amplitude is interpreted as
volume
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the sound version that corresponds to saturation or purity in light is called timbre, which is
a richness in the tone of the sound
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frequency is measured by
Hertz (Hz) - waves or cycles per second
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the visible, external part of the ear that serves as a concentrator, funneling the waves from the outside into the structure
- pinna
- it's also the entrance to the auditory canal (the short tunnel that runs down to the tympanic membrane or eardrum)
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when sound waves hit the eardrum, they cause which tiny bones in the middle ear to vibrate?
- hammer, anvil and stirrup
- the vibration of these amplify the vibrations from the eardrum
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the inner ear is a snail-shaped structure filled with fluid called
the cochlea
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this is the resting place of the organ of Corti
basilar membrane
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this contains the receptor cells for the sense of hearing
- organ of Corti
- hair cells - the receptors of sound - are located here
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when hair cells are bent against the other membrane, it causes them to send a neural message through what nerve?
the auditory nerve
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refers to how high or how low a sound is
pitch
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place theory
works best for moderate to high pitches
the pitch a person hears depends on where the hair cells that are stimulated are located on the organ of Corti
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frequency theory
- pitch is related to how fast the basilar membrane vibrates
- works best for low pitches
-
volley principle
groups of auditory neurons take turns firing in a process called volleying
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sound vibrations can't be passed from eardrum to cochlea
caused by damaged eardrum or damaged bones of middle ear (usually from infection)
can be helped with hearing aids
conduction hearing impairment
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hearing problem that lies in the inner ear or auditory pathways and cortical areas of the brain
normal aging causes the loss of hair cells
cochlear implant can help
nerve hearing impairment
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exposure to loud noises can damage
- hair cells
- tinnitus - ringing in the hears - can be caused by infections or loud noises
-
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common name for the taste receptor cells
taste buds
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olfactory receptor cells each have about a half dozen hairs called
cilia
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somesthetic senses
the body senses consisting of the skin senses, the kinesthetic sense and the vestibular senses
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skin senses
have to do with touch, pressure, temperature and pain
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kinesthetic sense
location of body parts in relation to each other
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vestibular senses
movement and body position (balance)
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three different types of pain?
- visceral (organ)
- somatic (skin, muscles, tendons and joints - something is being damaged or about to be)
- another type of somatic pain (acts as a reminder system, keeping people from further injury)
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gate control theory
pain signals must pass through a gate in the spinal cord
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the method by which the brain takes all the sensations people experience at any given moment and allows them to be interpreted in some meaningful fashion
perception
-
gestalt principles of perception?
- figure ground relationships (people perceive objects or figures as existing on a background)
- grouping (proximity, similarity, closure, continuity, contiguity)
-
Necker Cube is an example of
reversible figure
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continuity
refers to the tendency to perceive things as simply as possible with a continuous pattern rather than a complex, broken-up pattern
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contiguity
the tendency to perceive two things that happen close together in time as being related (ventriloquists)
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common region
tendency to perceive objects that are in a common area or region as being in a group
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monocular cues are often referred to as
pictorial depth cues
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linear perspective
- lines that are actually parallel seem to converge
- the "ends" of the lines appear farther away
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relative size
objects people expect to be of a certain size appear small and therefore much farther away
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overlap
- if one object blocks another, people assume the blocked object is behind the first one and farther away
- also known as interposition
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aerial perspective
farther away, the hazier it is
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texture gradient
things closer to you are distinctly textured - farther away, texture becomes smaller and finer
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motion parallax
objects outside a window zip by fast when they're close to the car, but objects in the distance move slower
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accomodation
monocular cue that isn't pictorial, it's a muscular cue
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binocular cues
- requires two eyes
- convergence (rotation of eyes to focus on a single object)
- binocular disparity (because eyes are a few inches apart, they don't see the same thing)
-
Hermann grid
- matrix of squares with blobs
- responses of neurons in the primary visual cortex respond best to bars of light of a specific orientation
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Muller Lyer Illusion
- Which line is longer?
- Right angles, buildings with corners
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Moon illusion
people know objects are farther away and still appear large, they magnify the moon in their minds
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autokinetic effect
small stationary light in a dark room appears to move or drift
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stroboscopic motion
rapid series of pictures seem to be in motion
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phi phenomenon
lights turned on in sequence appear to move
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people's tendency to perceive things in a certain way because of previous experiences or expectations influence them
perceptual set or perceptual expectancy
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top down processing
- use of pre-existing knowledge to organize individual features into a unified whole
- people who have done puzzle or seen picture of it
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bottom up processing
- analysis of smaller features building up to a complete perception
- top of puzzle box was lost
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any object, event or experience that causes a response
stimulus
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learning to make a reflex response to a stimulus other than the original, natural stimulus that normally produces it
- classical conditioning
- Pavlov and his dogs
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the original, naturally occurring stimulus
- unconditioned stimulus
- for Pavlov's dogs, this was the food
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the reflex response to the unconditioned stimulus
- unconditioned response
- for Pavlov, this was the salivating
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stimulus that has no effect on the desired response
neutral stimulus
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stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned reflex response by being paired with the original, unconditioned stimulus
conditioned stimulus
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learned reflex response to a conditioned stimulus
conditioned response
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repeated pairings of neutral stimulus and unconditioned stimulus is usually called
acquisition
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the tendency to respond to a stimulus that is only similar to the original conditioned stimulus is called
- stimulus generalization
- (sound of coffee grinder when anxious about dentist drill sounds)
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stimulus discrimination
- this occurs when an organism learns to respond to different stimuli in different ways
- coffee grinder, after a few listens, doesn't produce the anxiety of a drill
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conditioned response briefly reappears when the original conditioned stimulus returns (though it's usually weaker and shorter lived)
spontaneous recovery
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higher order conditioning
occurs when a strong conditioned stimulus is paired with a neutral stimulus
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emotional response that has become classically conditioned to occur to learned stimuli, such as fear of dogs
conditioned emotional response
-
conditioned taste aversions, along with phobic reactions, are an example of
- biological preparedness
- animals learn certain associations with only one or a few pairings due to the survival value
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Pavlov believed that the conditioned stimulus, through its association in time with the unconditioned stimulus, came to activate the same place in the animal's brain that was originally activated by the unconditioned stimulus. he called this process
stimulus substitution
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Rescorla exposed rates to a tone before an electric shock. What did he discover about the relationship between the conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus?
the CS must provide some kind of info about the coming of the UCS in order to achieve conditioning
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cognitive perspective
consciously expecting something to occur
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the kind of learning that has to do with voluntary behavior
- operant conditioning
- deals with the effects of pleasant and unpleasant consequences
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law of effect
- if an action is followed by a pleasurable consequence, it will be repeated. If unpleasant, will tend not to be repeated.
- Thorndike developed this
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example of a primary reinforcer?
- food, liquid, touch
- it satisfies a basic need
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example of a secondary reinforcer?
- cash
- it's associated with primary reinforcers
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reinforcement of a response by the addition or experience of a pleasurable consequence such as a reward or a pat on the back
positive reinforcement
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the remove or escape from something unpleasant increases the likelihood of a response being repeated. this is called
negative reinforcement
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fixed interval schedule of reinforcement
- a reinforcer is received after a certain, fixed interval of time has passed
- ex: a paycheck every two weeks
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variable interval schedule of reinforcement
- interval of time after which an organism must respond in order to receive a reinforcer changes from one time to the next
- ex: pop quizzes
- dialing a busy phone number
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fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement
- the number of responses required for reinforcement is always the same
- sandwich shop punch cards - 10 punches for a free sandwich
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variable ratio schedule of reinforcement
- the number of responses changes from one trial to the next
- slot machines
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punishment by application
- occurs when something unpleasant is applied
- spanking
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punishment by removal
- removal of something pleasurable or desired after the behavior occurs
- grounding a teenager
- time out, fines for disobeying the law
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any stimulus, such as a stop sign or a doorknob, that provides the organism with a cue for making a certain response in order to obtain reinforcement
discriminative stimulus
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small steps toward some goal are reinforced until the goal itself is reached
shaping
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successive approximation
the small steps rewarded during shaping
-
tendency for an animal's behavior to revert to genetically controlled patterns
instinctive drift
-
behavior modification
- use of operant conditioning techniques to bring about desired changes in behavior
- (gold stars for reading books)
-
the modern term for a form of behavior modification that uses both analysis of current behavior and behavioral techniques to mold a desired behavior or response
applied behavior analysis
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biofeedback
using feedback of a person's biological information (such as heart rate) to create a state of relaxation
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insight
- rapid perception of relationships
- (Kohler's chimpanzee Sultan fitting sticks together to retrieve a banana)
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learned helplessness
- tendency to fail to act to escape from a situation because of a history of repeated failures in the past
- Seligman's dogs
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observational learning
- learning of new behavior through watching someone else
- bandura's bobo doll
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Bandura's four elements of observational learning?
- AMIM
- Attention
- Memory
- Imitation
- Motivation
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the process of getting sensory information into a form that the brain can use
encoding
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information processing model - like a computer - why?
three different systems of memory: encoding (like typing); storage (save); retrieval (opening a file)
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parallel distributed processing model
memory processes are proposed to take place at the same time over a large network of neural connections
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levels of processing model
info that is more deeply processed will be remembered more efficiently and for a longer period of time
-
iconic memory
- visual sensory memory
- its capacity is everything that can be seen at one time
-
eidetic imagery
ability to access a visual memory over a long period of time
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echoic memory
- the brief memory of something a person has heard
- its capacity is about 2-4 seconds
-
selective attention
- the ability to focus on only one stimulus from all sensory input
- cocktail party effect
-
short term memory v. working memory?
short term is a thing or place into which information is put. working memory is more like an active system that processes the info in short term memory
-
short term memory usually lasts how long without rehearsal?
12-30 seconds
-
maintenance rehearsal
- continuing to pay attention to the information to be held in memory
- not the most efficient way of putting info into long-term storage because to get the info back out, you have to remember exactly how it went in
-
elaborative rehearsal
- make information meaningful in some way
- easiest way is to connect new info with something that is already well known
-
procedural memories
- memory for skills
- tying shoes, riding a bicycle
- Alzheimer's patients retain their procedural memories
-
declarative memory
facts and information
-
semantic memory
anyone has the ability to know this, it's often learned in school or by reading
-
episodic memory
memories of what happened to you during the day, special events, etc.
-
explicit memory
- memories that are easily made conscious and brought from long term storage into short term memory
- episodic and semantic memories are forms of this
-
semantic network model
assumes that info is stored in the brain in a connected fashion with concepts that are related to each other stored physically closer to each other than concepts that are not highly related
-
the tendency for memory of any kind of information to be improved if the physical surroundings available when the memory is first formed are also available when the memory is being retreived
- encoding specificity
- this would help us do well on a test taken in our classroom, if we actually learned anything in that classroom
-
memories formed during a particular physiological or psychological state will be easier to remember while in a similar state
state-dependent learning
-
recall
memories are retrieved with few or no external cues, such as filling in the blanks on an application form
-
recognition
- involves looking at or hearing information and matching it to what is already in memory
- word-search puzzle
-
serial position effect
information at the beginning and end of a list, such as a poem or song, tends to be remembered more easily and accurately
-
recognition tends to be very accurate for
images, especially human faces
-
false positive occurs when
someone thinks that he or she has recognized something or someone but in fact does not have that something or someone in memory
-
example of automatic encoding?
you may not know how many times cars have passed down the street but when asked can give an answer of often, more than usual or hardly any
-
example of flashbulb memory?
where you were when JFK was shot, 9/11, Challenger explosion
-
constructive processing view of memory retrial, memories are built from pieces stored away at encoding. example?
people, upon learning details of an event, knew it all along
-
the tendency of people to falsely believe that they would have accurately predicted an outcome without having been told about it in advance is called
hindsight bias
-
misleading information can become part of an actual memory, affecting its accuracy. that's known as the what effect?
misinformation
-
false memory syndrome refers to?
the creation of inaccurate or false memories through the suggestion of others, often while the person is under hypnosis
-
can false memories be created for any kind of memory?
no, they have to at least be plausible
-
implausible events could be made more plausible by have experimenters provide what kind of feedback to participants?
false feedback
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encoding failure
- failure to process information into memory
- your friend may have said something to you as he walked out the door, you may have heard him, but if you weren't paying attention, it would not get past sensory memory
-
memory trace
- some physical change in the brain which occurs when a memory is formed
- if the traces aren't used over time, they may decay
-
proactive interference
- tendency for older or previously learned material to interfere with the learning and retrieval of new material
- you get a new cell phone number and confuse it with the old when giving your digits to friends
-
retroactive interference
- recently learned information interferes with older information
- trying to program your old vcr after having the new one for a year
-
retrograde amnesia
loss of memory from the point of injury backwards
-
anterograde amnesiz
- you can't form new memories
- HM
- this is most often seen in people with senile dementia
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