Psyc mid 2

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Your friend tells you that she always studies for her exams only by cramming the night before. What would you tell your friend about the effectiveness of this study strategy? In your answer, describe a specific experimental result that you might tell her to convince her of your perspective.

Cramming, though better than nothing, is not an effective study strategy. Studies comparing learning after massed (all at once) vs. spaced (spread out) exposure find that spaced exposure leads to better learning. For example, Sobel et al. taught 5th graders vocabulary words in either massed (train 2x on one day) or spaced (train 1x on one day, and 1x a week later) conditions. They found that memory 5 weeks later was much better for the students in the spaced condition. Furthermore, if you're only going to study material only once (which is a mistake, as we've just seen), there is evidence that retention will last longest if your study period is somewhere midway between the day you learn and the day of the test (roughly speaking, between 25% and 75% of the time between - the graph is on the slide).

1. What is the purpose of myelin?

Myelin is a substance that is wrapped around the axons of some neurons to help propagate the action potential.

The left brain hemisphere controls the left side of the body. True or false.

False. The left side of the brain controls the right side of the body.

What gross changes in brain functioning occur as children mature (from infancy to early adulthood)?

The frontal lobe develops, allowing better ability to inhibit the dominant response, to control attention, to behave in a more reasoned manner. Processing speed increases.

2) Describe the concept of hedonic reversals, and give examples. Do other animals exhibit hedonic reversals?

"Hedonic reversal" refers to the acquisition of liking for innately aversive experiences (e.g., sad films, disgusting humor, and roller coaster rides), or substances, such as strong or bitter drinks (e.g., black coffee, whiskey) or irritant spices (chili peppers, ginger). Hedonic reversals in the domain of food seem unique to humans: even in towns that consume (and throw out) large quantities of spicy foods, stray dogs appear to prefer non-spicy foods.

Give two examples of experiments demonstrating a misinformation effect. What do these phenomena imply about how memories are formed?

- Leichtman & Ceci's (1995) "Sam Stone" study, in which children were asked leading questions about what Sam had done, and some later convincingly (and falsely) insisted that he had ripped up a book and gotten a teddy bear dirty - Loftus & Palmer's (1974) "car crash" study, in which people watched the same video of a car crash, but those who were asked how fast the car was going when it "smashed into" the other car gave higher estimates than those who were asked how fast the car was going when it "hit" the other car These findings imply that forming and maintaining memories is a constructive process; memories of an event can be influenced by information learned after the event has already ended. (These results also suggest that people can be quite confident in memories that are false!)

Describe the results of a study showing how infants' preferences can be shaped by prenatal experience.

- Preferences for tastes: Pregnant women were given carrots during their third trimester; later, their 6-month-old babies liked carroty cereal more (they frowned less and ate more of it) when compared to infants whose mothers hadn't eaten lots of carrots. (Mennella, Jagnow, & Beauchamp 2001) - Preferences for sounds: Infants were found to prefer the theme music of a TV show their mothers watched frequently while pregnant to the theme music of other TV shows (likewise with Dr. Seuss stories read aloud frequently during pregnancy vs. unfamiliar stories). Newborns also prefer the sound of their own mother's voice over other female voices. (Hepper, 1988; DeCasper & Spence, 1986; DeCasper & Fifer, 1980)

What are some arguments for language being an "instinct"?

--Creoles (full-fledged languages) are created by children exposed to pidgins (makeshift jargon that isn't a real language—amalgamations of words from various languages). For example, Hawaiian Creole. This was also the case with Nicaraguan Sign Language. A pidgin sign language was invented by deaf children in Nicaragua, and other children exposed to this pidgin sign language developed a full-fledged language (a creole), complete with grammatical devices such as verb agreement. --Simon, a deaf child born to deaf parents who were late learners of American Sign Language is an example of a creolization by a single child. The only language he was exposed to was his parents' defective non-native ASL, yet he was far better at ASL than they were. He systematized their inconsistent grammar. --Chomsky's argument from the poverty of the input. Children know a lot about language that they could not have learned from the limited data they receive.

In the formation of sentences, why would grammatical categories be phrases (noun phrases, verb phrases, prepositional phrases) and not just nouns, verbs and prepositions?

--In the sentences "She loves Rodolphe," "The protagonist loves Rodolphe," and "Three girls love Rodolphe," "she", "the protagonist," and "three girls" are doing the same work—that is, they are serving the same function in the sentence—and the grammatical category Noun Phrase captures this fact. One can think of grammatical categories as variables, and we would want "she" and "the protagonist" to both be possible instantiations of the same variable, Noun Phrase. If Noun were the variable instead of Noun Phrase, "she" would be a possible instantiation but "the protagonist" would not. --Phrases can have phrases embedded in them, and this is what allows language to have infinite expressive power. A noun cannot have another noun within it (in general), but a noun phrase can have another noun phrase within it.

1) Give an example of top-down processing in language processing.

--Recognizing words based on context: if the conversation is about fowl, "tur.." is more likely to end up being "turkey" than "turban." Or "cam, please" is perceived as "can, please" in a bar. --"Hallucinatory" word-finding: when provided with text that's supposed to match a song that we originally said had no recognizable words, we hear the words provided in the text. --Incremental parsing (committing to a syntactic structure before the entire sentence is spoken). A listener builds a syntactic structure based on what's the most likely interpretation, given the present context, and given knowledge about the likelihood of certain words occurring after other words.

5) How do French attitudes to food differ from American attitudes? What about cultural practices and aspects of the environment? What can we learn from these differences?

...Americans are more likely to associate foods with health terms (e.g. "heavy cream" and "unhealthy"), whereas the French are more likely to appreciate food for its culinary value. Americans are more likely to worry about food and obesity, but less likely to agree that they eat a healthy diet. In France, supermarket and restaurant portion sizes are significantly smaller; snacking is less common, and freshness and taste of foods are prioritized over quantity and shelf life. Walking, bicycling, and public transport are more common than in the US. Taken together with the greater average lifespan, lower average BMIs, and reduced rates of heart disease enjoyed by the French, these differences suggest that we should not curtail the pleasure of eating, but instead should focus on the environment to reduce food intake and encourage more exercise. More broadly, there is nothing fated or inevitable about obesity and obesity-related illness; behavioral and attitudinal changes could in principle make Americans healthier.

6) Are human emotional expressions universal? How do we know?

...Fear, anger, sadness, joy, disgust, and surprise appear to be expressed with similar facial expressions in nearly all cultures (though fear and surprise may not be differentiated in some rural tribes). In the Norton chapter, Paul Ekman describes several of his findings: - People from Japan and the US were videotaped while watching emotional videos in private, and they made similar facial expressions to the videos. - When viewing video footage of a Stone Age tribe in Papua New Guinea, naïve viewers could understand which emotion a person was feeling without knowing any context. - People in Papua New Guinea were given stories about people experiencing different emotional events (meeting friends, being threatened by a wild animal), and were asked picked to pick out the picture of the face which matched the story. The Fore people reliably matched the same faces and stories as Westerners (even though most had little or no experience with Westerners or Western culture). - Similar results have been found in over twenty literate Western and Eastern cultures.

4) Describe a study showing how portion sizes influence eating behavior.

...Geier and Rozin (2006) left a bowl of M&Ms out in a lobby with either a teaspoon or a tablespoon for serving. When the bowl included the larger spoon, people took on average 70% more M&Ms than when the bowl included the smaller spoon. (Similar effects have been observed using small vs. large tootsie rolls or pretzels, and foods like Pringles with dividers breaking the chips into groups.)

1. What evidence is there that babies are smarter than they appear to be? Three examples were given, in three different domains.

1)Babies show evidence of statistical knowledge: In the studies by Xu & Garcia (2008) and Xu & Denison (2009), babies watch an experimenter pick balls (without looking) from a box filled with mostly pink balls and a few yellow balls. There are two conditions: the expected condition and unexpected. In the expected condition, the experimenter picks 4 pink balls and 1 yellow ball. In the unexpected condition, the experimenter picks 1 pink ball and 4 yellow balls. Babies look longer at the scene in the unexpected condition as compared to the expected. The effect disappears if the experimenter appears to be looking into the box while picking. 2)Babies show an understanding of the physical world: In a study by Baillargeon (1987), a panel is rotated 180 degrees (like a drawbridge) while the 3.5- to 4-month-old infant watches and habituates. The experimenter then places a box in the path of the rotating panel. Then either the possible or impossible event is presented. In the possible event, the panel stops rotating because it's blocked by the placed box. In the impossible event, the panel continues rotating through its180 degree path. The impossible event is perceptually identical to the habituation event (and the possible event differs perceptually from the habituation event), yet infants look longer at the impossible event. The implication is that infants know the box is there, and also understand that the presence of the box implies that the drawbridge should not be able to complete its arc. 3)Babies show an understanding of the social world: In unpublished research by Hamlin, Wynn, and Bloom, 80-95% of babies 5-6 months old reached for a puppet that had been portrayed in a skit as being good/helpful, rather than reaching for the puppet that had been bad/adversarial. Newborn babies imitate (they stick their tongues out when they see a face sticking its tongue out), suggesting they recognize that other faces are like their own face, and perhaps that other people are like themselves.

1. Describe a correlational survey study you might design to test the hypothesis that caffeine makes you think better. Correlational research tests whether there are significant statistical relationships between variables. To conduct a correlational study testing whether there is a relation between drinking caffeine and better thinking, you could stand on Locust Walk and ask Penn students to fill out a survey. In your survey, you could ask students how many cups of coffee they drank that day, and also ask them to complete a logic puzzle. You might also ask them to report their GPA. To test your hypothesis, you would then see if caffeine consumption correlates with the participant's performance on the logic puzzle, his/her GPA, or both.

1. Describe an experiment that suggests that orientation selectivity in the visual cortex is dependent upon experience. Blakemore and Cooper (1970) raised cats in environments that contained either vertical or horizontal stripes. They found that in the cats raised with horizontal stripes, there were many cortical cells that preferred horizontal stripes but almost no cells that preferred vertical stripes (where "prefer" means "fires most when a stimulus of that orientation is presented within the receptive field"). The opposite was true for the cats raised with the vertical stripes. This shows that the orientation selectivity of cortical cells in cats is at least partially dependent upon experience.

What were Piaget's 4 stages? Give a characteristic feature of each.

1. Sensorimotor stage (birth to about 24 months) - no symbolic reasoning; the world not differentiated from the child; all cognition present and physical. 2. Preoperational stage (about 2-7 years) - no "operations"; fail the conservation tasks; focus on only most salient dimension of a situation; "egocentric". 3. Concrete-operational stage (7-11) - pass conservation tasks but fail more abstract logic. Can't reason easily about things that are not true or not present to see. 4. Formal-operational stage (12 +) - able to reason formally and logically.

1. What are the limitations of correlational research designs? A major limitation of the correlational study is that you can only weakly infer causality from correlational data. One reason for this is the directionality problem. Just because X is correlated with Y does not mean that X causes Y. Take the example of caffeine and thinking. Even if your survey results show that people who drink more caffeine are better at thinking, this might be because people who are smarter choose to drink more caffeine. If this is true, then saying caffeine improves thinking is actually backwards since it's the other way around. Another problem with correlational research is the third-variable problem. Even when your variables correlate as expected, the correlation might really be due to a third variable, Z, that drives changes in both X and Y. Building on our caffeine and thinking example, it might be the case that people with high IQ's both think better and tend to drink more caffeinated beverages. Thus although the data will show that people who drink lots of caffeine do better on logic puzzles and have higher GPAs, the inference that caffeine causes either of these things would be wrong

1. What does it mean to operationalize a variable? In psychology we study large, often unwieldy constructs. We study concepts like "thinking," "creativity" and "depression." Although we may all have a roughly similar idea of what thinking is, what creativity is, and what depression is, psychologists who study these variables need to define them in very specific ways that they can measure. Defining a variable in a specific way that can be measured is called operationalizing a variable. In the example above, the only way you know whether caffeine improves thinking is if you have a concrete, tractable way of measuring what "thinking" is. In question #1 above, thinking was operationalized as GPA as well as performance on a logic puzzle.

1. What is behaviorism? Behaviorism is the perspective that everything about human behavior comes from learning, so we should study learning and behavior instead of thoughts.

1. What is habituation? Habituation refers to the decline in the response to a stimulus once the stimulus has become familiar.

1. What is the "grandmother neuron"? Is there really such a thing? The "grandmother neuron" refers to a theory that there is a specific neuron in the brain designated to a certain person, object, etc. For example, there may be a neuron in the brain that is very excited when you see your grandmother, or pictures of your grandmother. It is not entirely clear whether or not this concept is true (remember the Jennifer Aniston neuron discussion!), but most neuroscientists agree that this would not actually be possible.

1. What is the invariance problem? Objects present themselves in many different ways (i.e. the same thing can be a different color, at a different angle, etc.). The invariance problem asks how we are able to perceive things as what they actually are, despite the fact that they may look different at different times.

1. What kind of information do the dorsal and ventral visual pathways tell us about a stimulus? The dorsal pathway (which passes through the parietal lobe) is concerned with "where" and "how" questions about a stimulus (e.g. where is the banana? How should I position my hands for peeling it?). The ventral pathway (which passes through the temporal lobe) is concerned with the "what" questions about a stimulus (e.g. is that a banana?).

1. Why may there be two visual streams? Wouldn't it be easier to just have one stream that tells us all of the information about a stimulus? Perhaps we have two visual streams because it is more efficient to process different kinds of information about a stimulus in parallel (at the same time). If we have to make quick decisions, this would enable us to understand the stimulus faster

2. Describe the concept of classical conditioning Classical conditioning comes from the concept that similar ideas tend to excite one another. According to theoretical accounts before the 1960s, conditioning is about association, or co-occurrence: when two things are frequently experienced together, the idea of one tends to excite the idea of the other. (This isn't quite right, we know now; this will be discussed on Jan 24.)

What are some cognitive or emotional benefits of being 75 years old as compared to being 20?

75-year-olds: Have greater world knowledge (although working memory and long-term memory decline with age; and processing speed becomes slower). Have more positive emotional experiences, perhaps because of greater wisdom in making choices and reflecting on what is possible in the present Focus on the positive more (e.g. they have better memory for emotionally positive than emotionally negative photos)

1. What is a confound? Why should we be concerned about confounds in research?

A confound is something that varies systematically with the independent variable. For example, in an observational study on caffeine consumption and academic performance, we might find that people who drink more caffeine are also more likely to be highly motivated to do well in their courses. In this example, motivation to do well in school is the confound. Confounds are problematic because they make it difficult for us to be sure whether change in the dependent variable is due to the effects of the independent variable or the effects of the confound. In the example above, if we find that people who drink more caffeine also have higher GPAs, we can't be sure whether this is due to the fact that these individuals drink more caffeine (the IV) or the fact that these individuals are more motivated to do well (the confound).

1. What is the purpose of a control group in an experiment?

A control group does not experience the experimental manipulation in a study. The group receiving experimental manipulation is then compared to the control group to see if there are any differences in the dependent variable(s). For example, in an experiment that is testing the efficacy of a new drug, the experimental group would receive a drug and the control group would receive a placebo. The control group should be as similar to the experimental group as possible except in the difference you are interested in.

Sometimes what we think we know, and what is intuitive, may not always be true. Describe how the experiment involving daycare late fees is an example of this and how the results were explained.

A daycare center was frustrated that parents were late in picking up their children, so they started to charge a late fee. However, parents tended to be late more often after the fee was implemented. Researchers Gneezy & Rustichini say these results occurred because the social pressure to be on time was actually more powerful than the economic consequence.

1. What is the difference between a dependent and an independent variable?

A dependent variable is the variable that is measured in a study, while the independent variable is the variable that the experimenter purposely manipulates (to see if this leads to changes in the dependent variable).

1. What would you predict would be the outcome of a drug that inhibits the re-uptake of GABA from a synapse?

A drug that inhibits GABA re-uptake in effect increases the amount of GABA in a synapse and thus would increase GABA action on the target neurons. Since GABA is an inhibitory neurotransmitter, the drug would increase the inhibition of these neurons.

1. What might a neuroscientist argue about the mind-body problem?

A neuroscientist may argue that the mind and body are both controlled by the brain. Neural processing and signaling control behavior (body) and thoughts (mind). Our experience of consciousness arises from the non-supernatural action of ensembles of neurons.

1. What is the difference between an agonist and an antagonist? Give examples.

A neurotransmitter is a chemical that is released by one neuron that can communicate with other neurons. An agonist is a chemical that increases neurotransmitter action while an antagonist is a chemical that decreases neurotransmitter action. Cocaine is a dopamine agonist, it makes the dopamine effects last longer. Alcohol is a GABA agonist (makes GABA actions last longer) but is also a glutamate antagonist (that is, it weakens the effect of the neurotransmitter glutamate).

1. What is a normal distribution?

A normal distribution is a special kind of distribution which is roughly symmetrical and in which 68% of the data fall within one standard deviation on the mean and 95% of the data fall within two standard deviations from the mean. Many real life variables are normally distributed.

1. Explain the center-surround receptive field that is characteristic of cells in the retina.

A retina cell with a center-surround receptive field will fire differently depending on whether light is shined in the middle (center) or outside (surround) of the receptive field. For example, a cell may fire a lot when light is shined in the center but inhibit its firing when light is shined in the surround. If there is light on both the center and surround, then the cell will not change its firing rate.

How did Piaget have explain failures of conservation? Is there another way to explain these results?

According to Piaget, children in the preoperational period are unable to interrelate the different dimensions of a situation. For example, instead of attending to the height and width of cups, they only look at how tall the water appears. Children are only able to integrate mental representations once they reach the concrete operational period. However, subsequent researchers have found considerable evidence that preschool children have basic mathematical skills (see p. 559 of the textbook). It may be the case that Piaget's task is structured in too difficult a way, or that the experimenter's repetition of questions causes the child to second-guess himself. (Various modifications to the conservation task—such as reducing the number of items, questioning the child carefully, and making sure not to provide misleading hints—sometimes enable children to succeed.)

How would Piaget have explained the A-not-B error? Is there another way to explain these results?

According to Piaget, during the sensorimotor period children's conceptions of objects are tied up with their own sensations. Therefore, the child believes that his reaching toward location A is a characteristic of the toy he found there: he's not searching for the toy, but the-toy-I-found-in-A. The child's error reflects an incomplete understanding of object permanence. However, Piaget's interpretation might not be correct. Even as children are reaching for location A, they often look at location B. This suggests that they know the correct location (B), but have trouble overriding the habit of reaching toward location A. This may occur because inhibiting habitual behaviors depends on certain areas in the prefrontal cortex, an area which is relatively slow to develop. (Lending further evidence to this hypothesis, monkeys with PFC lesions show a pattern of responses to the A-not-B task similar to that of human infants).

What is accommodation?

Adjusting existing theories or schemas to fit new facts.

1. Why does the action potential only propagate in one direction

After the action potential reaches a certain portion of the membrane, that portion goes into a refractory period, which is a time where the membrane is unprepared for the next action potential. This ensures (for the most part) that the action potential moves in one direction.

1. Researchers should make every effort to create the best experiments that are possible. Define the following aspects of research that should be taken into consideration: external validity, demand characteristics, reliability, validity, third-variable problem, random assignment, internal validity.

All terms are defined in Chapter 1 of the Gleitman, Gross, and Reisberg textbook.

1. What is an action potential?

An action potential is a brief change in the electrical charge of a neuronal membrane that involves sodium and potassium flux. The action potential propagates along the axon to (usually) carry the signal to other neurons

What two hormones are primarily involved in the circadian cycle, and what is the function of each?

Cortisol promotes wakefulness. Melatonin promotes sleep.

According to Jean Piaget, all cognitive development depends on the processes of assimilation and accommodation. Define these two terms and give examples of each.

Assimilation refers to a child's process of interpreting the world in terms of existing schemas. For example, a child's interactions with electric and paper fans might lead her to believe that wind is caused by something moving. When the child goes outside and feels wind and sees trees moving, she might fit this information into her existing schema and conclude that the moving trees are causing the wind. Accomodation refers to the processs of changing schemas based on interactions with the environment. For example, a child might point to a picture of a fox and say "doggy." After his mother corrects him, he accommodates his schema for four-legged furry animals and begins to learn to tell these species apart.

Describe an experiment that used habituation of looking time to investigate infants' knowledge about the physical world; describe another that investigated numerical cognition. What do these experiments suggest about infants' knowledge about the world?

Baillargeon (1987) - an opaque screen rotates 180 degrees toward and away from an infant. A solid object is then placed in the way of the screen. The infant is then shown either a "possible" event (the screen advances backward until it hits the object, stops, and then starts rotating forward again) or an "impossible" event (the screen continues to rotate the full 180 degrees, seemingly passing through the solid object). Infants reliably look longer at the impossible event than the possible event, suggesting that they are surprised by it—and that they understand that solid objects can't pass through one another. Starkey, Spelke, & Gelman (1983, 1990) - Infants were shown a series of slides, each containing 3 objects of various types and spatial arrangements, until the infants became bored and stopped looking. Then a new series of slides was presented in which some slides contained two objects and some contained three. Infants looked reliably longer at the slides that contained two objects rather than three, suggesting that infants have some concept of "threeness".

What is chunking? What does it have to do with some people's ability to recall extremely long lists of digits? What does it have to do with the ability of chess masters to recall the arrangement of pieces on a chess board?

Chunking is the process of reorganizing materials in working memory by grouping a number of items into a single, larger unit. For example, someone might chunk "3, 4, 9, 2" into "3 minutes and 49 point 2 seconds, near world-record mile time." People who can remember extremely long lists of digits often accomplish this by chunking groups of digits into meaningful units (e.g., running times, for the participant in Ericsson et al.'s study). Similarly, chess masters can recall the arrangement of pieces on a chess board because they chunk the pieces into meaningful groups of pieces. If they can't use these chunking strategies (e.g., because the list of numbers can't be turned into running times, or because the chess pieces are arranged randomly), they can no longer hold so much information in working memory.

8. Classical conditioning and operant/instrumental conditioning are rather different phenomena but they are often confused with each other. Explain how classical and operant conditioning are different from each other. Be sure to include at least 2 specific differences in your answer.

Classical conditioning involves learning an association between an unconditioned stimulus and a conditioned stimulus, such that the conditioned stimulus triggers an automatic response. In contrast, operant conditioning involves learning to associate a behavior with a reward, and therefore performing rewarded behaviors more frequently. Specifically, two key differences are: -Operant conditioning involves voluntary behavior; classical conditioning involves automatic responses -Operant condition involves learning about the association between response and a stimulus (a behavior and a reward); classical conditioning involves learning about the relationship between two stimuli

Describe what consonants are.

Consonants are created when the air flow through your mouth is obstructed in some way. A consonant is defined by the location of the obstruction in the mouth (e.g. bilabial is both lips creating the hindrance; glottal is the glottis creating the hindrance) plus the manner in which the airflow is obstructed (e.g. a plosive is created when the airflow is completely blocked for a brief time; a nasal is created when the airflow is diverted through the nasal passage).

Describe the "language-as-action" model of language

Conversation is not like sending letters—it's not created by one person forming a message and then mailing it to the other person, the other person receiving the message and decoding it, then sending her own message back. Rather, conversation is coordinated in time and arises out of interdependent actions between the conversational partners. It's a project between people.

4. What is the difference between depressants and stimulants?

Depressants are drugs that decrease nervous system activity and stimulants increase nervous system activity.

1. What would Descartes say about the mind-body problem?

Descartes argued that the mind and body are discrete. He believed that the body was controlled by "animal spirits" which functioned like a hydraulic machine. They traveled through the body and ultimately ended up in the pineal gland, which worked like a kind of valve system for directing the animal spirits and effecting action. He thought that that reflexes, pain, pleasure, and recall were functions of the body. Descartes believed that the function of the soul (mind) was to think, to reason. The soul also acts in the pineal gland; in this gland the "animal spirits" (body) and soul interact. Descartes' view on the mind-body problem was not well received but it highlighted the important question of how the mind may influence the body.

How does language "make infinite use of finite means"?

Discrete units are recombined, yielding an infinite number of brand new utterances. Recursion (where phrases are embedded within phrases; and sentences are embedded within other sentences) allows an unlimited number of new sentences to be created. For example, "The cat is bored" is a possible sentence, as are "The cat on the mat is bored" and "He thinks the cat on the mat is bored." One can keep embedding phrases within that sentence, and/or embedding that sentence within other sentences—indefinitely--with each embedding creating a new, acceptable sentence. Similar arguments can be made about combining speech sounds into words.

We saw that honeybee communication has a discrete (i.e. digital) as well as a gradient (i.e.analog) component. Why would human language need to be discrete/digital? Why can't it just be analog?

Discreteness is what gives language its infinite expressive power. Analog signals can express only so much (more, More, MORE, MORE!!) whereas combinations of discrete units, plus a set of rules for interpreting them, yield an unlimited range of expressions.

1. What is EEG and what is it used for?

EEG stands for electroencephalography and it is a method used to study the brain. EEG. Electrodes are placed on the scalp (it is a noninvasive procedure) and voltage changes in the brain are measured as a proxy for brain activity.

1. What is the difference between efferent and afferent neurons?

Efferent neurons carry messages outward from the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and afferent neurons carry messages inward toward the central nervous system

Explicit (also called declarative) long-term memory can be organized into episodic memory and semantic memory. Explain the difference between these two types of memory and give an example of each.

Episodic memory is memory for specific events. For example, remembering that I ate eggs for breakfast this morning relies on episodic memory. Semantic memory is general knowledge (e.g., facts, definitions). Semantic memories are not tied to any particular time or place. For example, knowing that eggs come from chickens relies on semantic memory.

1. In what ways are experimental designs superior to longitudinal or correlational research designs?

Experimental designs in which participants are randomized to conditions allow the researcher to make stronger causal inferences. Because randomization obliterates the third variable problem discussed in the answer to Question #3 above, the causal inferences that can be drawn from experiments are much stronger. In addition, in experiments, the independent variable is usually manipulated before the dependent variable is measured, and therefore there is also no need to worry about reverse causality.

Imagine where you were when you first heard about the Sandy Hook school shooting. Is your episodic memory of that day likely to be any more factually correct than your memory of what happened to you on December 13th, 2012, a more ordinary news day? Why or why not, and how do we know?

Even though "flashbulb memories" of shocking or emotional events may seem more vivid and realistic than other types of memories, research suggests that they are no more factually accurate. Talarico & Rubin (2009) demonstrated this in their study of Duke students' memories of what they were doing on September 11th and on the preceding days. When they asked the same students to recall these details again at a later date, the researchers found no differences in the number or consistency of details reported, even though participants felt much more certain of their memories from September 11th. "Flashbulb memories" may seem especially long-lasting because we tend to recall and rehearse them (for example, recounting where you were and what you were doing at the time) more frequently than other types of memories—but this doesn't ensure that our recollections are correct.

Describe two experimental results (one in animals, one in humans) that suggest that learning can relate to measurable anatomical changes in the brain.

Experimenters trained owl monkeys to press their finger tips on a rotating plate for a large amount of time. Before the monkeys did this task, the experimenters mapped their somatosensory cortex to determine which areas of cortex corresponded to which areas of their hands. They mapped the somatosensory cortex again after the monkeys spent time placing their finger tips on the rotting plate, and observed substantial changes in the mapping (e.g., more space devoted to the 2nd and 3rd finger tips, which probably got the most sensory information when the monkeys did this task). In a study with human medical students, Draganski et al. measured gray matter volume before and after students studied for a medical exam. They observed increases in gray matter in the posterior parietal lobe and in the hippocampus.

1. What is the blind spot?

For the retina to communicate with the brain, axons from ganglion cells must pass through a "hole" in the retina. Of course, that means there are no rods or cones in that area so it cannot "see". Thus, it is called the blind spot. Note: there is an interesting exercise about this in the textbook on page 164

1. Name the four lobes in the brain. Provide a function that is associated with each.

Frontal lobe - involved in planning, decision making, predicting, inhibition, contains motor cortex Parietal lobe - contains somatosensory cortex, sensory perception Temporal lobe - involved in hearing and language Occipital lobe - involved in vision

1. You decide to graph the distribution of Penn students' heights. What would you put on the x-axis? What would you put on the y-axis?

Height would be plotted on the x-axis, and the number of people at each height would be plotted on the y-axis.

How do the risks associated with driving drowsy compare to those of driving drunk? Studies have found that after a person spends 18 hours awake, their performance is comparable to that of someone with a blood alcohol level of .05. In the USA, crashes caused by the driver falling asleep are often as lethal as crashes caused by drunk drivers.

How do the sleep-wake cycles of newborns differ from those of adults? Babies up to 16 weeks old have polyphasic sleep cycles (they sleep and wake many times per circadian cycle). Adult sleep is monophasic (we sleep once per circadian cycle).

Consider the following exchange: Amy: I'm out of cash. Bob: There's a Wawa around the corner. If, hypothetically, Grice's principles of cooperative conversation were NOT operating here, what will Amy take Bob to mean? If Grice's principles of cooperative conversation ARE operating here, what will Amy take Bob to mean—and why?

If Grice's principles of cooperative conversation were NOT operating here, Amy would only be able to conclude that Bob is informing her that there is a Wawa around the corner, period. If Grice's principles of cooperative conversation ARE operating here (as they are in normal conversation), Amy will be able to draw the inference that the Wawa has an ATM machine (or gives cash back on debit cards or something). The only way that "There's a Wawa around the corner" can mean "You can get cash at the Wawa" is if Bob is obeying Grice's principles--

You have a child who is wetting the bed. Explain how you would stop this behavior using a) the principles of classical conditioning, and b) the principles of operant conditioning.

If I was using classical conditioning to address my child's bed-wetting habit, I would create an association between bed-wetting and waking up. As discussed in lecture, you can buy mattress pads that make a noise when they get wet. Thus, every time my child wets the bed, he would hear the noise and wake up. Over time, he would learn this association and wake up in order to use the bathroom. If I was using operant conditioning to address his bed-wetting, I would reward him for nights in which he did not wet the bed. Over time, this rewarded behavior would become more frequent.

1. How does random assignment help to take care of the problem of confounds? What are the limits to this approach?

If individuals are randomly assigned to groups in an experiment, we would expect there to be few meaningful differences between individuals in one group and individuals in the other group, because group assignment was due entirely to chance. Thus, random assignment can help to limit the effects of confounds. However, random assignment is not perfect at balancing groups on all possible confounding variables, particularly when only a small number of people are being randomly assigned. Additionally, even with random assignment there may be aspects of the experiment that vary systematically between groups. For example, in our experiment we were interested in the effects of caffeine on Stroop performance, but because subjects in the two conditions drank sodas that taste different in addition to having different amounts of caffeine, taste was confounded with caffeine in this design.

1. Why is it important to systematically collect data?

If we just rely on our memories, or on picking subjects that are convenient, the results are subject to bias.

1. Give an example of sensory adaptation.

If you enter a room that smells bad, after spending some time in the room, you may not smell the odor as much as you did when you entered, or even at all. This is convenient, though when someone else enters the room, that person will not have adapted yet and will likely notice it more than you. In general, perceptual systems respond more to change than to continuity.

You're at a party and someone says, "It's like Eskimos and their hundred words for snow..." How might you respond?

If your aim is to set the person straight, you can tell him that it's just not true that Eskimos have a hundred words for snow. They do have several words for snow. But they have many words assembled from other words, so it's unclear what counts as a separate word for snow. (Does Spanish have 50 words for "speak", because verbs are conjugated for person, tense, aspect, and number? Eskimo languages are like this example times a thousand.) English also has many words for snow: sleet, hail, powder, slush, etc. Also, it hasn't been shown that one's language affects how one perceives snow; Eskimos don't see more kinds of snow because they have more words for snow. It could be the other way around: a culture in which snow is important will generate more words for snow.

Give an example of observational learning.

In Bandura's famous study of observational learning, children watched an adult punch and kick an inflated doll, and later imitated this behavior.

Describe one study result that supports the claim that practice and cognitive ability both matter for extraordinary performance in a particular domain.

In a study with piano players, researchers found that sight reading performance correlated with both hours of practice (a measure of deliberate practice) and working memory (a measure of general cognitive ability). The effects of practice were stronger, but both measures were independently correlated with judges' ratings of pianists' sight reading.

1. How is color perceived?

In humans, there are three types of cones, each type fires in response to light within a certain range of wavelengths. Based on the combined input from these three types of cones, the brain can calculate what color we are actually seeing, by using the ratio of firing among the three types of cells. This way the system as a whole can tell both what color something is, and what intensity the light reflecting from it is.

1. What is the difference between a within-subject and a between-subject design? Discuss how you could study the caffeine and thinking hypothesis using these designs.

In a within-subject experimental design, each participant is exposed to each level of the independent variable introduced by the experimenter. By contrast, in a between-subject design, different groups of subjects experience different levels of the independent variable. Say you want to design an experiment to see whether caffeinated beverages improve thinking more than decaffeinated beverages, and you are using a within-subject design. In a within-subjects design, you would have the subjects drink caffeine, administer a thinking test (e.g., a set of logic problems), and then later on, have the same subjects drink a decaffeinated beverage, and follow that with another thinking test. To test your hypothesis you would compare how subjects did on the thinking test after drinking caffeinated drinks, compared to how they did after drinking decaffeinated drinks. By contrast, if you decided to use a between-subjects design, you would randomize the participants to two groups. One group would get a caffeinated beverage, the other would get a decaffeinated beverage, and you would measure which group did better on a post-intervention thinking test.

1. What is unique about the fovea?

In most of the retina, one bipolar cell receives signals from dozens and dozens of photoreceptors. However, in the fovea, one bipolar cell receives signals from only one photoreceptor. This is why visual acuity is greatest at the fovea. Also, there are only cones (no rods) at the fovea

5. "Classical conditioning isn't just about [the CS and US] happening together, it's about [the CS] being informative." Describe an experimental result that support this conclusion. Be sure to explain the key findings of the experiment and how they support this conclusion.

In one experiment, rats were assigned to two different experimental groups. In Group A, rats were shocked 40% of the time after hearing a tone, but were never shocked without first hearing the tone (thus, the tone was predictive of an impending shock). In Group B, rats were also shocked 40% of the time after hearing a tone, but were sometimes shocked without first hearing the tone (thus, the tone was not particularly predictive of an impending shock, because they rats were never safe from a shock). In both experimental conditions, the tone happened together with the shock, but the tone was only informative in the second condition. The experimenters found that the rats became conditioned (showed a fear response to the tone) only in Group A, not in Group B. Thus, the CS must be informative about the US (not merely associated with the US) for classical conditioning to happen.

What are participants are asked to do in the Stroop task? What is the typical pattern of results? Why do we see this pattern?

In the classic Stroop task, participants are instructed to name the colors different words (color names) are printed in. In the congruent condition, the words are printed in the same colors they denote ("BLUE" printed in blue, "RED" printed in red, etc.) In the incongruent condition, color words are printed in the wrong colors ("RED" printed in green, "BLUE" printed in red, "YELLOW" printed in purple, etc.) People are generally slower to respond and make more mistakes in the incongruent condition, because it involves attending to the color of the word while suppressing the automatic response of reading.

6. In many cases, the conditioned response can be thought of as preparation for the unconditioned stimulus & response. Explain how a heroin addicts' response to an empty hypodermic needle illustrates this idea. What does this have to do with drug craving?

In this case, the US is the heroin and the UR is the biological effect of using heroine (e.g., increased mood, decreased pain sensitivity). To prepare for this unconditioned response, the CR is the opposite physiological response (e.g., decreased mood, increased pain sensitivity) that would maintain homeostasis when combined with the UR. In this case, the empty hypodermic needle is a conditioned stimulus that the heroin addict associates with heroine. When he sees the needle, it triggers a conditioned response (decreased mood, increased pain sensitivity) to prepare for the heroine that he expects to come. However, if the drug isn't available, he only experiences the CR (e.g., decreased mood, increased pain sensitivity); these feelings and behaviors are what we call drug craving.

Describe the A-not-B task. Around what age do we see peculiar results in performance on this task?

In this task, the experimenter allows an infant to play with a toy, then hides it in one of two locations, both in full view of the infant and within reach. After a few trials of hiding the toy in location A, the experimenter hides the toy in location B (again, in full view of the infant). Before about 8 months, infants do not search for the toy when it disappears. At around 8 months, however, performance on this task changes. A typical 8-month-old infant would perform well during the first trials, where the toy is hidden in location A. But after the experimenter begins hiding the toy in location B, the infant would continue to search in A. (Children of 12 months or older typically do not make this error).

Do 5-year-olds have a coherent, adult-like theory of biology?

It's not clear whether their theory is coherent and wrong, or just incoherent and fragmentary. According to work by Susan Carey, their thinking about whether animals are all similar in essential ways (a requirement of a theory of biology) has the odd property of considering humans as very basic, so that things true of humans may well be true of all other animals, while all other animals are each a unique case, so learning something about bees may not tell you anything about flies, certainly not about humans. By the age of 10 children, like adults, view facts about (say) dogs as being just as informative about humans as facts about humans are about dogs. We're all animals together. Children know that family members are similar in certain ways, but they haven't worked out which things are likely to be because of biological inheritance (which they don't really understand) or learning and family enculturation.

Why is it difficult to build a machine that understands language?

Language is optimized for people talking to people. In conversation, we boil things down and take advantage of what people know. Machines don't know much and have a hard time accounting for context. (Another reason, which I didn't talk about in class, is that humans are exceptionally good at dealing with variation from one voice to the next; why this is so, and how we do it, is not understood, but this kind of variation among talkers is quite difficult to get a computer to do well.)

1. Define measurement reliability and validity. How is it possible for a measure to be reliable but not valid?

Measurement reliability is the consistency of a measure. One important type of reliability is test-retest reliability, the likelihood that the same individual with receive the same score when tested under the same conditions at a different time. Measurement validity refers to whether the measure actually captures the construct it is designed to capture. A measure that is reliable but not valid would consistently give the same results for the same individual, but these results would not correspond to the true value of the construct the measure was designed to capture. An example of a measure which is reliable but not valid is a broken scale: the scale might tell a person he weighs 150 lbs every time he step on the scale, when in reality this person weighs 250 lbs. Thus, the scale is reliable because it consistently gives the same result for this individual, but not valid because the result does not correspond to his actual weight.

2. Caffeine takes 20-30 minutes to kick in, but the majority of the class said that they feel the effects of caffeine after less than 10 minutes. How does this relate to classical conditioning? Again, identify the US, UR, CS & CR in your answer.

Most of us feel like caffeine kicks in before it actually does physiologically. This means that the energized, jittery feeling of caffeine kicking in that we experience right after drinking coffee must be elicited by classical conditioning, rather than an actual physiological effect of caffeine. Initially, caffeine (the US) elicits an energized, jittery feeling (the UR). Through repeated pairings, we learn to associate caffeine with the tastes/smells/sights of coffee (CS). Through classical conditioning, the tastes/smells/sights of coffee (CS) start eliciting the energized, jittery feeling (CR) on their own.

When were most of the neurons in your brain made?

Most of your brain's neurons were made between 4 weeks after conception (month 2) and 16 weeks after conception (month 4). They start near the ventricles and have to migrate to the cortex.

1) What basic taste preferences do newborns exhibit?

Newborns like sweet and fat tastes and dislike bitter and irritating (spicy) foods.

Piaget found that children younger than 7 years of age fail the "3-mountain" task, in which they are shown a diorama from one side, and are asked to report what the doll (sitting on the other side) sees. Piaget interpreted this finding to mean that children are egocentric (they cannot put themselves in another person's shoes). Should we agree with Piaget's conclusion? Why or why not? In your justification, describe the findings of a more recent study that uses a simpler version of the "3-mountain"task.

No, we should not. The 3-mountain task is difficult because it requires the ability to imagine another's point of view, but ALSO because it is taxing on working memory. It requires the ability to perform mental rotation of objects (difficult), and the ability to put tags on objects. So it could be the case that children fail the 3-mountain task not because of their fundamental egocentricity, but because they are not good at doing many lower-level tasks. Research that supports this comes from study that tests egocentricity, but is much simpler. Children are presented with cards, and are shown that card has two different images, one on each side—for example, a cat on one side and a dog on the other. The child is seated facing a (person? doll?), with the card between them, so the child sees one side of the card and the doll sees the other. When a 3-year-old is asked what the doll sees, she reliably reports the correct image. So in this situation (where the task demands are low), the child is able to show her ability to take another's point of view—showing that children are not fundamentally egocentric.

Do we need language to think? Justify your answer.

No. Examples: Infants think, but they do not have language yet. Hellen Keller describes thinking before she learned language. Matching strangers' faces does not require language* Identifying a squiggly shape as one that's been presented before does not require language. *for the record, the faces in the slide were: Juliette Binoche, Monica Bellucci, Vincent Cassel, and Daniel Day-Lewis.

In a famous study, London taxicab drivers were found to have larger posterior hippocampi than age-matched controls. Can we claim that driving a taxicab in London causes the posterior hippocampus to grow? Why or why not?

No. This is a correlational study, and we know that correlation does not imply causation. (of course, it doesn't rule out causation either.) Like other correlational results, this result is subject to reverse causality or third-variable explanations. Maybe people with larger posterior hippocampi are more likely to become cab drivers. Maybe a third variable (persistence on memory tasks?) makes people more likely to have large posterior hippocampi and to become cab drivers.

1. If a study shows that students who sleep >8h per night have better grades, can we conclude that more sleep causes better grades?

No. We can say that more sleep is associated with better grades, but we cannot say that more sleep causes better grades. Correlation does not imply causation.

Do you still have about the same number of neurons and synapses as you had as a 6 month old?

No: you have many fewer. In much of the brain huge numbers of neurons and synapses are removed during your preschool and early school years. This process starts rather later in the frontal lobe and continues later too, with adult numbers of neurons and synapses by your mid to late teens. Brain development continues anatomically well into your 20s. It is thought that this pruning improves brain function: the most useful neurons and neuronal connections survive, the others are pruned.

10. Define and give an example of the following schedules of reinforcement: fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable.

On a fixed ratio schedule of reinforcement, reinforcement is delivered after a set number of responses (e.g., the rat is rewarded after pressing the bar 20 times). On a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement, reinforcement is delivered after a set amount of time (e.g., the rat is rewarded after 30 seconds). On variable schedules of reinforcement, the reward is not delivered after a predictable ratio of responses or interval of time. For example, slot machines reward on a variable schedule, because the reward (winning) is not predictable.

On average, which of the following tasks will take the most time, and why? What do differences in performance on these tasks highlight about attentional processes? A) Finding 1 red square among 50 red dots B) Finding 1 blue dot among 100 red dots C) Finding 1 red square among 25 red dots and 25 blue squares D) Finding 1 blue dot among 50 red dots and 50 blue squares

Give an example of an experiment that illustrates memory intrusions from schematic knowledge.

Participants waited briefly in a professor's office and, seconds later, were asked to recall what was in the office. One third of the participants remembered seeing books in the office, even though none were present.

Deese, Roedinger, & McDermott carried out an experiment in which they asked participants to remember a series of words: bed, rest, awake, tired, dream, wake, snooze, blanket, doze, slumber, snore, nap, peace, yawn, drowsy. When participants were later asked to recall as many of the words as possible, they were extremely likely to falsely recall a particular word as being present on the list. What is the word, and why did this error occur?

Participants were just as likely to recall the word "sleep" as being present on the list as any of the other words. This intrusion error occurred because all of the words on the list were semantically related to the concept of sleep. This theme makes the words easier to recall than if they were all unrelated, but participants are likely to falsely remember the theme word (or 'lure') as actually being present in the list.

How did Wilder Penfield figure out what areas of the brain are involved in the control of movement and sensation of different body parts?

Penfield treated epileptic patients by removing brain tissue. During the neurosurgery, Penfield stimulated areas of the cortex of the brain and saw that it led to sensation in or movement of specific body parts.

1. What are the three main types of cells in the retina that pass information through the system?

Photoreceptors (rods/cones), bipolar cells, ganglion cells. There are also horizontal cells and amacrine cells that give rise to the ganglion cells' receptive-field properties.

Explain how the sentence "She saw the boy on the hill with the binoculars" can have multiple meanings.

Phrases have an invisible structure, and our interpretation of that invisible structure is what gives us our understanding of the sentence. She saw [the boy on the hill][with the binoculars]: a kind of seeing (i.e. with the binoculars) She saw the boy [on the hill [with the binoculars]]: a kind of hill (the hill with the binoculars, not the hill with the trucks) She saw [the boy [on the hill] [with the binoculars]]: a kind of boy (the boy that's both on the hill and has the binoculars)

3) Describe an example of a heuristic that leads us to evaluate the health value of foods in a flawed way.

Possibilities: - Monotonic mind: We think the effect of food and amount of food is monotonic: if a little is good, more is better. Using this heuristic, some people might agree that a diet totally free of salt would be healthier than one that includes a pinch of salt daily. But this isn't true; many things that are bad for us in large amounts are good for us in small amounts. - Categorical/dichotomous mind: people tend to categorize foods (as "good" or "bad", "healthy" or "unhealthy," etc.) and think they can eat low calorie foods indefinitely. This type of heuristic might lead people to agree that a teaspoon of ice cream has more calories than a pint of cottage cheese. - Framing: people react differently to foods depending on how they are described or presented. For example, the same food might be perceived to be healthier if described as "95% fat free" as opposed to "5% fat"; a chocolate covered "granola bar" might be viewed as healthier than the same snack described as a "candy bar".

We have seen several experiments demonstrating that people can fail to remember something they've experienced firsthand, either minutes before, or hundreds of times. Describe the results of three of these experiments, and what they tell us about the role of attention in memory.

Possibilities: - Most participants were unable to pick out the correct penny design from an array of fake penny designs. (Nickerson & Adams, 1979) - Most office dwellers didn't know where the nearest fire extinguisher was located even though they had passed by it daily for several years. (Castel, Vendetti, & Holyoak, 2012) - Most participants did not report anything strange about the experience of signing a consent form, even though the experimenter had been replaced by a different person, wearing a different colored shirt, during their interaction. (Levin, Simons, Angelone, & Chabris, 2002) - Participants watched a video of basketball players passing a ball. Later, most failed to report seeing the man in a gorilla suit walk through the scene. (Simons & Chabris, 1999) These experiments show that we can fail to remember something we didn't pay attention to, even in cases where it's something with which we have repeated experience (as in the first two experiments) or something really bizarre (as in the third and fourth experiments).

Your friend tells you that he studies by re-reading his notes, but never tests himself on the material to help himself learn. What would you tell your friend about the effectiveness of this study strategy? In your answer, describe a specific experimental result that you might tell him to convince her of your perspective.

Practice that involves recall (testing yourself) rather than just recognition (e.g., re-reading your notes) improves learning. When he prepares for tests, he should spend more time testing himself on all of the material. Karpicke & Roediger had subjects learn Swahili-English words pairs in 4 conditions, some of which involved less time studying and some of which involved less time testing. Learning was good (~80% correct at test) as long as subjects tested themselves on all word pairs, even if they studied only the word pairs they previously got wrong. However, in the conditions where subjects tested themselves less, performance dropped substantially (~36% correct at test), even if they studied the entire word list. Thus, the most efficient study strategy was to study only wrong answers and test yourself on all word pairs.

Name and describe three categories of learning which are preserved in patients with anterograde amnesia.

Procedural skills: Given practice, amnesic patients will gradually improve on procedural tasks (such as tracing a star shape through a mirror, reading words in a mirror, or completing a maze) even though they continue to deny having completed the task before. Priming: Amnesics are quicker to fill in the missing letters in "ch----nk" and "o-t--us" if they have previously been shown a list of words containing "chipmunk" and "octopus"—even if they deny having seen the words during the study phase. Or do take another example, seeing one word that's related to a second one makes interpreting the second one go faster. Classical conditioning: An example was given in class of a researcher who hid a sharp tack in his hand before greeting an amnesic patient. The next day, the patient refused to shake the experimenter's hand, even though he did not remember having been pricked. (Bonus: Perceptual learning, such as adapting to a new glasses prescription.)

Describe two experiments that illustrate children's failures to conserve quantity and number.

Quantity: The experimenter pours equal amounts of water into two identical cups and asks the child which one has more. The child understands that the two cups contain the same amount of water. The experimenter then pours the water from one of the cups into a taller, thinner cup, and asks the child which of the cups has more water in it. The child points to the taller cup. Number: The experimenter lines up two rows of 10 pennies and asks the child which one has more. The child understands that both rows contain the same number of coins. The experimenter then slides the coins in the top row slightly apart from one another and asks the child which row has more coins in it. The child points to the top row.

What type of memory does REM sleep help with? When does it tend to occur? What happens during REM?

REM sleep aids in the consolidation of procedural memories, and REM cycles occur with greater frequency towards the end of the night. Rapid eye movements and vivid dreaming are associated with REM sleep.

What are retrieval cues? What do they have to do with the experimental finding that people who studied a word list on land recalled more words when tested on land, and those who studied underwater recalled more when tested underwater?

Retrieval cues are hints or signals that help one to recall a memory. They relate to this experimental finding because some retrieval cues were tied to the location of encoding. Thus, when recall was happening in the same location as encoding, more cues were available to help subjects retrieve the words.

What is the difference between retrograde and anterograde amnesia?

Retrograde amnesia is the loss of memories before the source of the amnesia (e.g., an injury). A person with purely retrograde amnesia can't access old memories, but can form new memories. Anterograde amnesia is the loss of the ability to make new memories. A person with anterograde amnesia can recall episodic memories and semantic knowledge from before the amnesia began, but can't make new episodic and semantic memories. Sometimes people have both sorts, as was the case for Clive Wearing, the pianist we saw in the film clip.

1. What is the difference between rods and cones?

Rods are used primarily in the dark (low levels of light) and cannot perceive color. They saturate very quickly in bright light. Cones are involved in the perception of bright light. They are responsible for color vision.

1. Define & give an example of the following types of memory: sensory memory, short-term (or working) memory, long-term memory.

Sensory memory is the very brief storage of relatively unprocessed sensory input. For example, the sound of your roommate talking to you is stored briefly in sensory memory even if you are not actively processing it. Working memory is the place you hold information while you're working on it. For example, if you're holding a phone number in mind while you prepare to dial it, it would be stored in your working memory. Long-term memory is where information is stored more permanently (from minutes to years). For example, remembering what you ate for breakfast this morning requires long-term memory. Unless you're eating that breakfast right now.

1. What is sensory transduction? What is sensory coding?

Sensory transduction is the process through which a stimulus from the environment is converted into a signal in the nervous system. Sensory coding is the process by which the nervous system represents incoming stimuli

9. A circus trainer trains his monkey to ride a bike. Explain how he might have used the operant principle of shaping to accomplish this.

Shaping is the process of eliciting a desired response by rewarding behaviors that are increasingly similar to that response. In this case, the trainer might have initially rewarded his monkey (e.g., given him a treat) for approaching the bike. Once the monkey learns to approach the bike, the trainer would then only reward him for touching the bike, then for sitting on the bike, then for peddling, until he eventually learns to ride the bike.

What are some cognitive benefits of sleep? What are some consequences of sleep restriction or deprivation? Sleep contributes to alertness, memory consolidation, cognitive speed, emotional cognition, and decision making.

Sleep deprived individuals tend to do worse in these domains: they become mentally slow and inaccurate, have difficulty paying attention and remembering things and making decisions; they take more risks, and are more likely to be emotionally unpredictable and pessimistic.

What type of memory does slow wave sleep help with? When does it tend to occur? How does it change as we age?

Slow wave sleep aids in the consolidation of declarative memories, and SWS cycles occur with greater frequency towards the beginning of the night. The percentage of total sleep time spent in SWS decreases as we age (and this may be a factor contributing to age-related memory decline).

Describe what a "stage" is in Piagetian theory.

Stages go in an fixed order; they involve qualitative change (a child at stage n is really different from a child at stage n+1 - not just numerically different, faster or slower, etc.); and, for Piaget, they are domain general: if you're at stage n with respect to your abilities in one cognitive area (like social cognition) you should be in the same stage w.r.t. your abilities in another area (like physical cognition, spatial cognition, language, mathematical reasoning, or social cognition)

According to Lawrence Steinberg, why do teenagers do so many risky things? Or: how might one explain teenage risktaking using facts about brain development?

Steinberg argues that two factors help explain teenage risktaking: late maturation of the frontal lobes (hence less inhibition, less cognitive control, less reflective behavior that takes long-term interests into account) and increased sensitivity to dopamine and therefore feeling more pleasure from pleasurable activity.

. In an experiment described in lecture, subjects were asked to recall words after performing 1 of 3 tasks with them: judging whether they were upper or lower case, judging whether they rhymed with 'train', or judging whether they made sense in a sentence. In which condition did subjects recall the most words? Why?

Subjects recalled the most words in the condition where they judged whether the words made sense in a sentence. This condition required more depth of processing: subjects had to actively engage with the material in order to make this judgment, which led to better learning.

1. Why is it important that subjects are blind to condition? Specifically in the case of an experiment in which you randomly assign subjects to drink caffeinated versus non-caffeinated beverages, why is this important?

Subjects should be blind to condition because otherwise their expectations can affect the results. In the caffeine study we've been discussing, if subjects know that the researcher is giving them caffeine, and that they are then being asked to do a thinking task, subjects might realize what the experiment is about and this might affect the results. For example, the participant might decide to try and help the experimenter by trying harder so that the experiment "works."

1. What are the 5 different types of taste receptors

Sweet, sour, bitter, salt, and umami

Give an example of how teratogens in the maternal blood supply can influence development.

Teratogens are environmental factors that negatively influence development, such as lead, mercury, alcohol, cigarette smoke, X-rays, and certain diseases. To give one example, heavy consumption of alcohol during pregnancy can cause fetal alcohol syndrome, which is characterized by learning disorders, behavior difficulties, smaller stature, and facial abnormalities

1. What is the all-or-none law?

The action potential either fires or it does not, and the size of the action potential is always the same even if the stimulus strength differs.

1. Name the three main parts of a neuron and describe the role of each.

The cell body (also known as soma) contains the nucleus and the elements necessary for cell metabolism. The dendrites receive signals from other neurons. The axon sends neural signals to other neurons.

Skinner and other behaviorists believed that everything about human behavior comes from learning, and that psychologists should only study behavior (not thought). What are the strengths and limitations of this theoretical framework?

The behaviorist approach to psychology emphasized observable behavior. This allowed rigorous, systematic studies using the scientific method (in contrast to Freud's work, for example), and set a rigorous, mathematical standard for the field of psychology. Learning principles (e.g., classical conditioning, operant conditioning) also do explain a great deal about human behavior. However, many complex human behaviors (e.g., language, higher-level thought) cannot be adequately explained in terms of learning. Furthermore, not everything about human behavior comes from learning; humans have innate knowledge, and there are genetic contributions to behavior.

1. What is the main function(s) of the brainstem?

The brainstem is involved in the regulation of basic functions like heartbeat, swallowing, and breathing.

1. Briefly explain how (parts of brain that are involved) visual information is processed.

The image (light) is first detected by photoreceptors on the retina. The retina communicates with bipolar cells which project to ganglion cells, all still in the retina. The ganglion cells then send their axons to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN, in the thalamus). The LGN, like cortex generally, is in 6 layers; in each hemisphere, three receive information from the contralateral eye and three receive projections from the ipsilateral eye. The LGN then sends the information to the primary visual cortex. From there the information is further disseminated for higher-order processing. At each successive stage of visual processing, the representation of the image presumably becomes more and more abstract.

1. Define independent variable and dependent variable. In the experiment we did on caffeine and thinking, what was the independent variable and what was the dependent variable?

The independent variable is the variable that is manipulated in the experiment to see if it has an effect on the dependent variable. The dependent variable is the outcome measure. In our experiment, the independent variable was the type of soda students drank (Pepsi Max vs. Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi) and the dependent variable was performance on the Stroop Task.

What is assimilation?

The integration of new facts into theories or schemas.

7. What is Thorndike's law of effect?

The law of effect is the idea that responses followed by rewards will be strengthened, and responses followed by no reward (or punishment) will be weakened.

What part of the brain could be characterized as the "master circadian clock"?

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) of the hypothalamus is responsible for controlling circadian rhythms.

1. What are the pros and cons of using each of these designs?

The major advantage of the within-subject design is that you control for between-individual variation. In the between-subject design, it is possible that the groups you create actually differ on some fundamental variable that then causes the caffeine-drinking group to do better on the thinking test. When you run a within-subjects design, you eliminate this possibility because each person serves as their own control. Since the same person is first drinking caffeine and taking a test, and then later drinking a decaffeinated drink and taking a test, you can pretty safely conclude that the caffeine is what is causing the spike in test performance. The drawback of the within-subjects design, however, is that it only works if the change you are inducing with the independent variable fades quickly. For instance, if the effect of caffeine persists for 3 days, then giving the same subject a decaf drink two hours after the caffeinated drink is not going to be a clean test of how subjects perform on logic puzzles after drinking decaf. Psychologists call this lingering effect a "carryover effect." Carryover effects can be a huge problem in within-subject designs. They are not, however, a problem for between-subject designs because in between-subject designs, each subject is only exposed to one condition. A special kind of carryover effect is if the experience of being tested has an effect. For example, in the caffeine experiment you can't test the caffeinated and uncaffeinated trials at the same time. People might do better at a test the second time around. So you need to be careful in a within-subjects design that the ordering of the tests is examined. Often it's balanced across subjects: some who do one condition first, others who do the other first.

1. What do the mean and the median have in common, and how are they different? When would we expect the mean and the median to be roughly the same?

The mean and the median are both measures of where the center of a distribution lies. However, the mean is strongly influenced by outliers, whereas the median is not. In a symmetrical or normal distribution, the mean and the median are roughly the same

1. What are the mean and the median, and how are they calculated?

The mean is the average. It is calculated by summing all observations and dividing by the number of observations. The median is the middle observation. It is calculated by placing observations in order from smallest to largest and finding the observation that lies in the middle of this list. For example, if there are 9 observations, the 5th observation when placed in numerical order would be the median.

1. Describe the mind-body problem.

The mind-body problem examines the relationship between the mind (or soul) and body. More specifically, it involves the question of whether the mind and the body are distinct or are the same entities, and whether the mind influences the body and vice-versa. If they are distinct and yet can influence one another, how does this work? That's the mind-body problem

1. What is the opponent-process theory?

The opponent-process theory is a theory of color vision that proposes that there are three pairs of colors: red-green, blue-yellow, white-black, and that activating neurons sensitive to one color in the pair will inhibit neurons for the other color in the pair. This helps to explain why we see "afterimages" - like the demonstration in class with the square that was half green and half red. After starting at it for a minute or so, when the image is removed, we tend to see the same image in opposite colors.

1. What does the standard deviation measure? How does having a small vs. large standard deviation affect the shape of a distribution?

The standard deviation is a measure of the average distance from the mean. In a distribution with a very small standard deviation, all the data points would be tightly clustered together around the mean, resulting in a narrow curve (the solid line below). In contrast, in a distribution with a very large standard deviation, data points would be much more spread out around the mean, resulting in a wider curve (the dotted line below).

What's the difference between the strong and weak forms of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? Describe two studies that address this hypothesis.

The strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis states that language determines thought: if your language does not make a concept easy to express, you cannot think it easily (or even at all). The weak version states that the language one speaks influences how one thinks. A study by Winawer and colleagues (2007) investigated the weak version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The study compared Russian speakers, who have two words for blue (one for darker blues and one for lighter blues), and English speakers, who have only one word for blue, to see whether Russian and English speakers perceive blues differently. Results showed that Russian speakers were slower to match a colored swatch to a target if the colors of the two swatch choices were signified by the same word, and faster if the swatch choices were signified by different words. English speakers showed no such effect. (Note: the effect disappears when participants' use of language is interfered with, suggesting that the effect is not a purely perceptual effect--the participants are not actually seeing two different colors--but rather that language is being used as a kind of cognitive tool to speed categorization.) Studies of the Piraha people could be seen as investigating the strong version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. The Piraha language does not have words that denote specific quantities (like "three" or "five"). Given that, is it the case that they do not have the concept of exact quantity? It was found that when given tasks that had a memory component, the Piraha were unable to match a given number of objects. For example, if 5 spools of thread were dropped into a can, the Piraha participants were unable to drop 5 other objects into a can to match the 5 spools of thread. However, they were able to complete exact-quantity tasks that didn't have a memory component (for example, if the 5 objects remained visible, the participants could match 5 other objects to them perfectly, putting them in one-to-one correspondence). Different researchers interpret these results in various ways. One argument is that the use of a number vocabulary is necessary for having exact number concepts. Another is that cultures that do not make use of exact number concepts therefore have no words to express such concepts.

What is the threshold hypothesis? Describe one study result that does NOT support the threshold hypothesis.

The threshold hypothesis (as it applies to intelligence) states that intelligence only matters up to a point. Once you reach that threshold (e.g., an IQ of 120, according to Malcolm Gladwell), additional intelligence won't help you. One study that does not support the threshold hypothesis used children who scored in the top 1% of the SAT math section in 8th grade. The researchers compared the outcomes of children who were in the top ¼ of this group vs. children who were in the bottom ¼ of this elite group. Thus, both groups were above the threshold of "8th grade SAT math score in the 99th percentile," so the threshold hypothesis might predict that their outcomes would be similar. However, people who were in the top ¼ were much more likely to have achieved a variety of math-related accomplishments as adults (e.g., having a doctorate, having peer-reviewed publications, having patents) than people who were in the bottom ¼.

1. In an episode of The Office, Jim gives Dwight a mint every time his computer restarts (making a chime noise). After this happens multiple times, Dwight hears the chime of the computer restarting and comments that his mouth tastes funny. Explain how this prank is an example of classical conditioning. In your answer, be sure to identify the unconditioned stimulus (US), unconditioned response (UR), conditioned stimulus (CS) & conditioned response (CR).

The unconditioned stimulus (US) is the taste of a mint. For Dwight, this stimulus leads to the unconditioned response (UR) of salivating. The conditioned stimulus (CS) is the chime of the computer restarting. In Jim's prank, the US was repeatedly paired with the CS. After repeated pairings, the CS starts eliciting the conditioned response (CR) of Dwight salivating.

1. Theoretically, how could fMRI be used for communication by a paralyzed patient who cannot speak but can understand language?

Theoretically, if someone could make distinct brain regions "light up" on an fMRI scan (i.e. perhaps the motor cortex would "light up" when imagining kicking a soccer ball, and the parahippocampal gyrus would "light up" when imagining walking within one's house), they could associate these things with a "yes" or "no" answer and use these thoughts to communicate when asked yes or no questions. This has actually been done, on a limited scale, in some patients.

. In lecture on the 29th, we viewed pictures of objects. Two days later, many students in class were able to identify which picture had been shown once vs. twice. However, most of us are not able to accurately describe the appearance of a penny, even though we've seen many thousands of pennies during our lives. How can we understand these seemingly discrepant observations?

There are two key differences between these situations. First, we were paying attention to the pictures shown in lecture, but we generally don't pay attention to the appearance of a penny. Attention makes a huge difference for our later memory for information. Second, the test of pictures was a recognition test, while the task of "describe a penny" is a recall test (although we also saw a recognition test with pennies when we picked out which of many options was the correct penny). Recall tasks tend to be harder than recognition tasks, because in recognition the stimulus is its own cue - it matches the encoding conditions in lots of details. By contrast, in recall, the cue is often more abstract, like a word ("draw a penny.") or a concept ("hm, where can I get good kimchi?").

What do these findings imply about the nature of human memory?

These phenomena imply the existence of an implicit memory system that is distinct from declarative (explicit) memory. That H.M. could perform these tasks implies that the hippocampus is not required for the formation of implicit memories.

3. Little Albert was conditioned by pairing a loud noise with a white rabbit, but he later shows fear to a number of stimuli (e.g., other animals, a fur coat). What does this demonstrate about classical conditioning?

This demonstrates the principles of stimulus generalization: when organisms are classically conditioned, they respond to a range of stimuli that are similar to the original CS. Because the other animals (and even fur coat!) are similar enough to the original white rabbit, Little Albert generalizes to these stimuli, and elicits the same fear response to them that he would show to the white rabbit.

Research suggests that health risks relative to sleep duration follow a U-shaped curve; that is, people who sleep on average less than six hours or more than nine hours tend to have a greater risk of obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke, and all-cause mortality. How should we interpret this finding?

This is a summary of several observational (correlational) studies; therefore, we can't say for certain that the amount of sleep people get directly causes an increase in health risks. For example, people who are chronically ill may tend to sleep more than average, but this may be a consequence, and not a cause, of their illness. To interpret the left half of the graph, we would similarly need to consider whether there are possible third variables that could explain the relationship between reduced sleep and increased health risks. Although observational studies can't prove causation, they can be suggestive, particularly alongside experimental evidence showing that sleep deprivation leads to cognitive and metabolic changes that could have negative effects on health.

What is the "dimensional change card-sorting task" and what does it show?

This is the task in which a rule is established (we will sort cards according to their color) and maintained for a while, i.e. the child plays the "color game". Then the rule is changed; the child is told the new rule in a very explicit way. But very often children will simply keep on playing the old game. Sometimes they can even verbalize the new rule just before doing it the old way again. The task is a way to measure perseveration (continuing to follow "prepotent" or "default" or "habitual" behaviors).

Group X has higher blood pressure than group Y, and this difference is statistically significant. What does this mean?

This means that based on effect size, variability, and number of subjects, there is a significant difference between group X and Y. When a finding is statistically significant, you can assert with a certain level of confidence (determined before data collection by the experimenter) that the result would not have happened by chance alone (i.e. the effect is real and unlikely to be accidental).

1. The center-surround receptive field seems complicated. Why don't retina cells just fire when light is in its receptive field, and not fire when there is no light?

This organization can highlight edges of things. At an edge, say where a light object is on a darker background, center-on/surround-off cells will fire like crazy when their middle part is at the light edge—the center is getting light that makes it fire, and the surround, where the background is, is getting no inhibition. Such cells will fire less when "looking at" the middle of the object, because although the center will be getting light that makes it fire, the surround will also be getting light that makes it fire rather less.

2. What did the study by Sperling (with the matrix of letters and the tones) demonstrate about the capacity of our sensory memory, and how did it demonstrate this? Be sure to explain the logic of the study in your answer.

This study demonstrated that the capacity of visual sensory memory is larger than people can report using traditional methods of reporting (e.g., listing all the items they remember). In this study, subjects view a matrix of letters for a very brief period of time. After the matrix disappears, subjects are cued by a tone indicating which row of letters they should report. We can then extrapolate from the number of letters in the row that they were able to report to estimate the number of letters in the whole matrix that were in their sensory memory (e.g., if a subject viewed a matrix with 3 rows, and reports 3 letters in the row that was cued, then we can assume that he could have reported 3 letters in any of the 3 rows, and thus has a sensory memory capacity of 9 letters). Thus, this 'partial report' procedure allows us to estimate the capacity of sensory memory without it being constrained by the time it takes to report all items in sensory memory.

2. An fMRI study showed that brain activity in the prefrontal cortex predicted a response before subjects were aware of their response. What does this show?

This study shows that decision-making may involve subconscious processing and that many of our decisions may be beneath our awareness.

Describe 3 characteristics of healthy sleep.

To be restorative, sleep needs to be of sufficient duration (adequate time spent asleep), continuity (uninterrupted sleep), and intensity (deep sleep).

1. Where are the receptors located for each of the following senses: vestbular, pain, smell, taste, hearing, vision

Vestibular - receptors are in the semicircular canals in the inner ear Pain -pain receptors (nociceptors) are located in the skin Smell - receptors are located in the olfactory epithelium at the top of the nasal cavity Taste - taste receptors are located on taste buds on the papillae on the tongue Hearing - the receptors (hair cells) are located in the cochlea in the inner ear Vision - photoreceptors are located in the retina of the eye

Describe how pitch and harmonics work in producing vowels.

Vocal fold vibration determines pitch (low tension = low pitch; high tension=high pitch). The vocal tract provides harmonics: in "high" vowels like the vowel in "heat", the mouth volume is small, creating a high harmonic and the throat volume is large, creating a low harmonic. The pitch and harmonics together determine how a vowel sounds when spoken by a particular person.

1. Some patients (like Phineas Gage) have brain damage that is localized to certain areas of the brain. What can we learn from patients like this?

We can learn about different functions that are localized to certain brain regions by studying impairments (behavioral, emotional, social, linguistic, etc.) in patients with localized brain damage. For example, Phineas Gage had damage to his frontal lobes in his brain, and after this damage, he suffered from certain intellectual and emotional impairments. This gave scientists insight about the function of the frontal lobes.

Why are song lyrics notoriously difficult to understand?

We use pitch and rhythm to understand speech, and when that's interfered with, we lose the information we would normally have used to interpret the utterance. (of course, it's also the case that artistic language of various sorts often intentionally violates the statistical likelihoods we've built up from language experience; not all lyrics are meant to be understood easily.)

What are some reasons why it's a good thing that the linking of sound to meaning is arbitrary?

What are some reasons why it's a good thing that the linking of sound to meaning is arbitrary? 1. If sounds and meanings mapped onto each other, we'd often be confused. Example: cooking spices might all be named things that sound very similar. We might get generalities right but we'd often misinterpret the specifics. 2. We want meanings to change, but we don't want to have the word change each time there is a slight change in meaning. If words were descriptions, your name would have to change whenever you did.

What is the Method of Loci? Why is it so effective? The method of loci is a mnemonic technique in which you visualize each of the times you want to remember in a different familiar location. It is effective because it uses imagery to link the new items with familiar places. It also uses structure to constrain the set of possible memories: because you link the item to a location in a meaningful way (e.g., alumni saying 'cheerio' in college hall), fewer items could fit for any given location.

What are the primacy and recency effects? For each effect, list a proposed cause of the effect and an experimental result that supports this proposed cause.

When people hear a list of words and are asked to freely recall words from the list, they tend to recall mostly words from the beginning (primacy effect) and the end (recency effect) of the list. The primary effect may be caused by the fact that people devote more attention and rehearsal to early words than words occurring later in the list. This is supported by the result that if words are presented more slowly (so participants have time to devote more attention to each word), the primary effect becomes stronger (but the recency effect doesn't change). The recency effect may be caused by the fact that items from the end of the list are still in working memory when people report the word list. This is supported by the fact that adding a 30-second delay before participants report the word list eliminates the recency effect (but doesn't change the primacy effect).

4. How can the principles of classical conditioning be used to treat patients with phobias? Make sure to clearly explain how the treatment relies on the principles of classical conditioning.

When somebody has a phobia, their feared object (e.g., a snake) is like a conditioned stimulus that elicits the conditioned response of fear. Systematic desensitization works by creating a new association with the feared object. The person with a snake phobia would be repeatedly exposed to snake stimuli (gradually increasing in intensity) while remaining relaxed. Thus, the snake is now associated with feeling calm. Over time, this leads to extinction of the fear response.

What is "coarticulation"?

When speaking, we do not say one sound at a time. If we're saying "bat," we do not first say "b" then "a" then "t." Rather, the sounds influence each other. The "b" in "bat" is a sound different from the "b" in "boot" because the following sounds ("a" vs. "oo") differ. The great puzzle of speech perception is that without effort we perceive these acoustically different "b"s (etc) as being the same.

As the retention interval increases, recall decreases and forgetting increases. There are two broad explanations for this phenomenon. What are they, and which is more strongly supported by experimental evidence? - Learning new information disrupts the storage of old information. - The passage of time itself erodes memories.

While both factors likely play a role, experimental evidence suggests that learning new information exerts a stronger effect. (See the descriptions of Baddeley and Hitch's experiment on rugby players and Crowder's experiment on word learning on p. 319 of the textbook.)

Drug addiction has several characteristics including withdrawal and tolerance. What are these?

Withdrawal occurs when a person who is dependent on a drug stops using the drug and consequently experiences strong cravings, psychological distress, and medical distress. Tolerance is the diminished response to a drug that results from repeated use. Over time, the user requires larger drug doses to experience the drug's effects

1. What would happen if you only had two of the three cones in your retina?

You would experience colorblindness, and would have difficulty distinguishing between some different colors. This is because with only two cones, the visual system would have no way to resolve ambiguity between hue (color) and intensity.

Who appear to be the main initiators of language change?

Young women (who are socially integrated and who inspire others to speak like them).

Your friend tells you that he regularly gets four hours of sleep a night and operates just as well as he would on eight hours of sleep, because his body has gotten used to it. Should you believe him? Why or why not? It is likely that your friend is performing worse than he would on eight hours of sleep, but isn't aware of it. In the lab, chronically sleep deprived participants' subjective ratings of alertness don't decrease much over time, even as their performance drops off significantly.

1. What is fMRI and how does it work? What is it used for?

fMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging and this technique allows scientists to study brain activity (with more spatial resolution than EEG: you get more detail about where things happen in the brain). fMRI measures the amount of blood oxygen flow in the brain; areas with more oxygen demand have more neural activity. Oxygen flow is measured by detecting how hemoglobin with and without oxygen responds to intense magnetic fields.

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