Chapters 4, 5 & 7
perceptual learning
A change in the brain that modifies how we construct sensory information into perception
Drug interaction
A combined effect of two drugs that exceeds the addition of one drug's effects to the other.
Waking consciousness
A state of clear, organized alertness
Meditation
A state of open, nonjudgmental awareness of current experience
concept of state-dependent learning is based on
Condition of the student
Suppression
Consciously keeping memories from awareness
Sensation
Conversion of energy from the environment into a pattern of response by the nervous system; also, a sensory impression.
Altered state of consciousness
During which state do changes occur in the quality and pattern of mental activity
lies at the core of flashbulb memories
Emotion
Selective attention
Giving priority to a particular incoming sensory message.
Hypersomnolence disorders
Insomnia, night terrors, narcolepsy, and sleep apnea can all be classified under
non-rapid eye movement sleep
It is deepest early in the night during the first four stages of sleep
Perceptual constructions
Mental models of external events that are actively created by your brain
Difference threshold
Minimum difference in physical energy between two stimuli that can be detected 50 percent of the time.
Hallucination
People perceive objects or events that have no external reality
Conductive hearing loss
Poor transfer of sounds from the eardrum to the inner ear.
Drug-dependency insomnia
Prescription sedatives and sleeping aids can sometimes prove to be ineffective due to their impact on certain stages of sleep, which can result in even further lack of sleep
memory of how to ride a bike be stored
Procedural memory
Place theory of hearing
Proposition that higher and lower tones excite specific areas of the cochlea.
Where does maintenance rehearsal occur
Short-term memory
Explicit memory
Stored information that is consciously retrieved
Psychophysics
Study of how the mind interprets the physical properties of stimuli.
Consciousness
The awareness of one's internal thoughts and external surroundings
Latent content
The hidden or symbolic meaning of a dream, as revealed by dream interpretation and analysis.
Repression
Unconsciously burying unpleasant memories
Tranquilizer
a drug that lowers anxiety and reduces tension
Illusion
a misleading or misconstructed perception associated with psychosis, dementia, and drug intoxication
Frequency theory
a theory of hearing which states that pitch is decoded from the rate at which hair cells of the basilar membrane are firing
Eidetic imagery
ability to retain a "projected" mental picture long enough to use it as a source of information
Retrieval
concept of disuse is closely associated with which aspect of memory
Myopia
difficulty focusing on distant objects
Lucid dream
dream in which the dreamer feels awake and capable of normal thought and action
Binge drinking
drug abuse is popular among college students but still quite dangerous in its ability to inhibit brain development in young adults
ECG
electrocardiogram, a test that measures the electrical activity of the heartbeat
Absolute threshold
minimum amount of physical energy that can be detected 50 percent of the time
Episodic memory
part of the declarative memory stores an "autobiographical" record of personal experiences
Hippocampus
plays a key role in transferring information from short-term memory to long-term memory
Drug tolerance
progressive decrease in a person's responsiveness to a drug
opponent process theory of color vision
proposition that color vision is based on coding things as red or green, yellow or blue, or black or white
Perceptual expectancy
refers to past experience, motives, context, or suggestions that prepare you to perceive in a certain way
Hypnosis
state of consciousness characterized by focused attention, reduce peripheral awareness, and heightened suggestibility
Sleep apnea
suspected as one cause of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), or "Crib death"
Tip of the tongue state
the feeling that a memory is available but not quite retrievable
Trichromatic theory
theory of color vision based on three cone types: red, green, and blue
Activation-synthesis hypothesis
theory proposes that dreams are how brains process the random electrical dischargers of REM sleep
Metacognition
thinking about thinking
The Muller-Lyer illusion
two-equal-length lines tipped with inward or outward "V" shapes appearing to be of different lengths.
Sensory memory
type of memory in which information have the briefest life span