Chapters 4, 5 & 7

perceptual learning

A change in the brain that modifies how we construct sensory information into perception

Drug interaction

A combined effect of two drugs that exceeds the addition of one drug's effects to the other.

Waking consciousness

A state of clear, organized alertness

Meditation

A state of open, nonjudgmental awareness of current experience

concept of state-dependent learning is based on

Condition of the student

Suppression

Consciously keeping memories from awareness

Sensation

Conversion of energy from the environment into a pattern of response by the nervous system; also, a sensory impression.

Altered state of consciousness

During which state do changes occur in the quality and pattern of mental activity

lies at the core of flashbulb memories

Emotion

Selective attention

Giving priority to a particular incoming sensory message.

Hypersomnolence disorders

Insomnia, night terrors, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea can all be classified under

non-rapid eye movement sleep

It is deepest early in the night during the first four stages of sleep

Perceptual constructions

Mental models of external events that are actively created by your brain

Difference threshold

Minimum difference in physical energy between two stimuli that can be detected 50 percent of the time.

Hallucination

People perceive objects or events that have no external reality

Conductive hearing loss

Poor transfer of sounds from the eardrum to the inner ear.

Drug-dependency insomnia

Prescription sedatives and sleeping aids can sometimes prove to be ineffective due to their impact on certain stages of sleep, which can result in even further lack of sleep

memory of how to ride a bike be stored

Procedural memory

Place theory of hearing

Proposition that higher and lower tones excite specific areas of the cochlea.

Where does maintenance rehearsal occur

Short-term memory

Explicit memory

Stored information that is consciously retrieved

Psychophysics

Study of how the mind interprets the physical properties of stimuli.

Consciousness

The awareness of one's internal thoughts and external surroundings

Latent content

The hidden or symbolic meaning of a dream, as revealed by dream interpretation and analysis.

Repression

Unconsciously burying unpleasant memories

Tranquilizer

a drug that lowers anxiety and reduces tension

Illusion

a misleading or misconstructed perception associated with psychosis, dementia, and drug intoxication

Frequency theory

a theory of hearing which states that pitch is decoded from the rate at which hair cells of the basilar membrane are firing

Eidetic imagery

ability to retain a "projected" mental picture long enough to use it as a source of information

Retrieval

concept of disuse is closely associated with which aspect of memory

Myopia

difficulty focusing on distant objects

Lucid dream

dream in which the dreamer feels awake and capable of normal thought and action

Binge drinking

drug abuse is popular among college students but still quite dangerous in its ability to inhibit brain development in young adults

ECG

electrocardiogram, a test that measures the electrical activity of the heartbeat

Absolute threshold

minimum amount of physical energy that can be detected 50 percent of the time

Episodic memory

part of the declarative memory stores an "autobiographical" record of personal experiences

Hippocampus

plays a key role in transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory

Drug tolerance

progressive decrease in a person's responsiveness to a drug

opponent process theory of color vision

proposition that color vision is based on coding things as red or green, yellow or blue, or black or white

Perceptual expectancy

refers to past experience, motives, context, or suggestions that prepare you to perceive in a certain way

Hypnosis

state of consciousness characterized by focused attention, reduce peripheral awareness, and heightened suggestibility

Sleep apnea

suspected as one cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or "Crib death"

Tip of the tongue state

the feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable

Trichromatic theory

theory of color vision based on three cone types: red, green, and blue

Activation-synthesis hypothesis

theory proposes that dreams are how brains process the random electrical dischargers of REM sleep

Metacognition

thinking about thinking

The Muller-Lyer illusion

two-equal-length lines tipped with inward or outward "V" shapes appearing to be of different lengths.

Sensory memory

type of memory in which information have the briefest life span