PSYCH EXAM #2 STUDY QUESTIONS
35) Complete Measuring Up
#1 on P. 288
4) Know Figure 6.4
(P. 223)
33) Know Tolman's Study of Latent Learning.
(P. 251)
37) Know Table 7.1
(P. 290)
15) Know George Sperling's experiments
(They are summarized in the box on page 274.
5) Know figure
5.2
AND FIGURE
6.12 (Pgs. 228-229)
16) Know figure
6.18
21) Know Figure
6.21
35) Know Figure
6.38
6) Know Figure
6.5
20) Know figure
7.12
23) Know Figure
7.14
29) KNOW FIGURE
7.18 (P. 285)
39) Know Figure
7.22
43) Know Figure
7.24
4) Know figure
7.4 (P. 268)
6) Know figure
7.5 (P. 269- described in more detail on 268)
13) Know figure
7.9
3) How are the Reticular Formation, Thalamus and Amygdala involved in consciousness?
a) RF- controls levels of arousal b) Thalamus- where sensory information is integrated c) Amygdala- regulates our emotional response to stimuli
29) What does REM stand for? Why is it sometimes referred to as paradoxical sleep? (P. 146)
a) Rapid Eye Movement b) The paradox of a sleeping body with an active mind
9) What is the best-replicated brain-imaging correlate of antisocial and violent behavior?
a) Reduced brain functioning in the frontal lobe.
15) Know
Figure 6.17
5) What is the cognitive unconscious? Whose processes does this sound like?
a) Refers to the fast, automatic, effortless process that allows us to perform some tasks, like walking, on autopilot. b) Daniel Kahneman's automatic versus controlled processes.
15) Know figure 5.10. Why is the Thalamus so important? (Pg. 179)
a) This is the brain region that all sensory information (besides olfaction) is sent and integrated into a perceptual whole.
12) What is Weber's Law? (Pg. 178)
a) This law states that the just noticeable difference between two stimuli is based on a proportion of the original stimulus rather than on a fixed amount of difference. That is, the more intense the stimulus, the bigger the change needed for you to notice.
19) True of False- many brain regions are more active during sleep than while awake (P. 144)
a) True
47) Know Loftus's studies on suggestibility (P. 297-298).
On page 298 there is a great summary box.
14) What do hemineglect patients teach us about consciousness? (P. 140)
a) Unawareness of their visual deficit supports the idea that consciousness arises through the brain processes active at any point in time.
38) Why does most forgetting occur? (P. 290)
a. Proactive and retroactive interference
7) How many people exhibited inattentional blindness in Simons and Chabris (1999) famous study?
a) 50%
28) How long does it take to complete a sleep cycle? About how many cycles do you complete a night? (P. 146-147)
a) 90 minutes b) 5
18) Who was Jahi McMath and what was the controversy surrounding her diagnosis? (P. 141)
a) A 13 year-old girl who suffered brain death after a tonsillectomy. Her family argued that she could not actually be dead because her heart was still beating.
Chapter 4 (Pgs. 131-154) 1) Who is Erik Ramsey? What advances have been made in science since Ramsey's diagnoses that may improve his quality of life and other's with his condition? (131-132)
a) A 16 year-old injured in a car accident that now suffers from locked-in syndrome, which is a condition in which all or nearly all of a person's voluntary muscles are paralyzed. Erik is able to communicate by blinking his eyelids. b) Recent research raises the possibility that patients like Ramsey will be able to communicate by having their thoughts read by brain imaging machines with the eventual hope being we can use brain activity to create voice synthesizers that will translate their brain activity into speech.
5) Who is Daniel Kahnemann and what processes did he describe? Give examples of each. (P.134)
a) A Nobel Laureate that differentiated between automatic and controlled processes. Automatic is synonymous with routine and includes things like walking or driving. Controlled is slower and requires more attention and is used in complex and/or novel situations.
3) What is Dualism? Is this what most researchers believe today? (P. 133)
a) A concept created by the philosopher Rene Descartes. He stated that the mind is physically distinct from the brain (hence, dual) b) No. Instead they believe the brain and mind are inseparable.
9) What is change-blindness? What does this phenomenon illustrate? What did Simons and Levin find? (P.135-136)
a) A failure to notice large changes in ones environment. b) That we cannot attend to everything and thus are often blind to big changes in our environment. c) That we are more likely to notice a change when it occurs within our own group and less likely when it occurs in an out group. For example, college students are more likely to notice when a different college student from the original is asking them for directions after having been separated by workers carrying a door between their paths, than a different construction worker.
7) What may low resting heart rate indicate?
a) A lack of fear and a reduced likelihood of experiencing negative affect in response to a criminal act. This association has been show in 4 longitudinal studies.
16) What is the difference between a vegetative state and minimally conscious? (P. 141)
a) A persistent vegetative state is not associated with consciousness whereas a person in a minimally conscious state is still able to make some deliberate movements like tracking objects with their eyes.
10) What is Psychophysics? Who were Weber and Fechner? (Pg. 177)
a) A subfield of Psychology that examines our psychological experiences of physical stimuli. b) The researchers that developed this field.
2) Explain (Owen et al., 2006) and Figure 4.2 (P. 132). What do Owen et al. (2006) and cases like Erik Ramsey explain about consciousness?
a) A woman in a coma placed inside a brain-imaging machine was asked to imagine she was playing tennis or walking through a house. Her pattern of brain activity was similar to control patients asked to do the same thing. Researchers are hopeful that these findings and future work may lead to the ability of people in coma's to express their thoughts and ask for more medication in order to improve their quality of life. b) This suggests people can be conscious of their surroundings even when they appear not to be and that consciousness is associated with brain activity.
27) How do we know the brain must work to maintain sleep? (P. 146)
a) Abrupt noises can trigger K complexes and as people age and sleep more lightly their brain waves show fewer sleep spindles.
11) What is the difference between absolute threshold and difference threshold? Know Figure 5.5 (Pg. 177)
a) Absolute- the level of intensity at which participants correctly detect a stimulus on 50% of trials presented. b) Difference- The minimum amount of change required for a person to detect a difference between two stimuli. Also known as the just noticeable difference.
26) What kind of brain waves does EEG show when a person closes their eyes and relax? (P. 146)
a) Alpha waves
4) Psychopaths have an 18% reduction in what brain region?
a) Amygdala
Adrian Raine "Neurocriminology: implications for the punishment, prediction and prevention of criminal behavior" 1) What is Neurocriminology
a) An emerging field that seeks to apply techniques and principles from neuroscience to improve our understanding of crime, to predict crime, and ultimately to prevent crime.
4) What prenatal and perinatal influences have been associated with an increase in aggressive behaviors, externalizing behaviors, and/or criminal offending?
a) Birth complication in combination with maternal rejection, fetal mal-development during the second trimester as indicated by minor physical abnormalities like low seated ears or a single palmar crease, cavum septum pellucidum, which is thought to be an early marker of disrupted development in the limbic region of the brain, maternal nicotine and/or alcohol consumption during pregnancy, high lead levels in the mother during the first and second trimesters, higher manganese levels in the mother during pregnancy, poor nutrition in the first or second trimester, and malnutrition in infancy.
20) What processes operate according to circadian rhythm? What controls circadian rhythms? (P. 144-145)
a) Body temperature, hormone levels, and sleep/wake cycles. b) A BIOLOGICAL CLOCK!! However, circadian rhythms can be influenced by cycles of light and dark.
6) What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down processing? (Pg. 175)
a) Bottom-up: based on the physical features of the stimulus. As each sensory aspect of a stimulus is processed, the aspects build up into perception of the stimulus. b) Top-down: how knowledge, expectations, or past experience shape our interpretation of sensory information.
39) What do Horikawa et al. (2013) suggest?
a) Brain activity associated with the content of dreams may be similar to brain activity observed when the sleeper is awake and looking at similar objects. So one day we may be able to "read" people's dreams through their neural firing patterns.
11) What brain areas are active during sleep?
a) Brain areas associated with vision and the motor cortex. The prefrontal cortex, on the other hand, is not active.
6) Describe selective-listening studies and the cocktail phenomenon. (P. 134-135)
a) Cherry used the technique shadowing in his selective attention studies. This is when a person is asked to attend to one or two stimuli and then shadow it by repeating it back. He used headphones that played different messages in each ear. People were able to shadow the message they were asked to attend to, but could not recall the unattended message. b) The cocktail party phenomenon demonstrates how we cannot attend to many things (conversations) at once and that some stimuli (like the use of our name) can grab our attention more easily (i.e. in a room full of people chatting and having a good time, you can hear your name used in a conversation all the way on the other side of the room).
1) What two basic features of consciousness do researchers focus on?
a) Clarity of content b) Level of arousal
13) Explain the global workspace model of consciousness. (P. 139)
a) Consciousness arises as a function of which brain circuits are active. That is, you experience your brain regions output as conscious awareness. Support for this comes from studies showing that people with brain injuries are sometime unaware of their deficits.
7) Who developed the filter theory and what did this theory posit? (P.134-135)
a) Donald Broadbent. People have a limited capacity for sensory information and so they screen information, only allowing the most pertinent to enter. In this way, attention is acting like a gate that opens for important information and remains closed for unimportant information.
10) What regions of the frontal lobe are associated with antisocial and violent behaviors? What is each region specifically implicated in?
a) Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex- impulsivity and poor behavioral control b) Anterior Cingulate-impairments in inhibitory control and emotional processing c) Orbitofrontal cortex- emotional processing, learning from reward and punishment, and decision-making.
2) Give examples of altered states of consciousness.
a) Dreaming, hallucinating, hypnosis
24) What machine to sleep researchers use to measure brain activity? (P. 145)
a) EEG (electroencephalograph)
4) What is meant by consciousness is a subjective experience? (P.133)
a) Everybody experiences consciousness personally, thus we cannot know for certain that any two people experience the world in exactly the same way.
5) What is a proxy measure for amygdala function?
a) Fear condition
36) What were Freud's ideas about dreams? Do we still believe these ideas? (P. 152-153)
a) Freud believed dreams represent hidden conflicts and that objects in dreams have special symbolic meaning. b) No- there is no support for his ideas about dreams.
4) What theory describes how the brain creates a coherent experience?
a) Global Workspace Hypothesis of Consciousness- we have neurons within our brain that's key function is to integrate brain areas in order to create the experience of consciousness
1) Who is Ramachandran? How did he test his hypothesis for the cause of synesthesia? What other study from lecture was he involved in (hint: Ted talk) (Pg. 173)?
a) He is a neurologist that studied people with synesthesia. b) He examined brain scans of taken of people with synesthesia when they looked at back numbers on a white background and found evidence of neural activity in the brain area responsible for color vision. c) He researched learned paralysis and developed the mirror box to unlearn paralysis of a phantom limb.
11) What evidence is there for a causal connection between impaired orbitofrontal cortex and violent behavior?
a) Higher levels of aggression were found in war veterans who had experienced penetrating head injuries localized to the ventral prefrontal cortex. b) Neurological patients who suffered from an accidental head injury to the ventral frontal cortex show poor decision-making, reduced autonomic reactivity to socially meaningful stimuli and psychopathic-like behavior. c) A tumor in the orbitofrontal region preceded the onset of pedophilia in an individual and after resection of the tumor, the person's behavior returned to normal.
34) What are the differences between REM and Non-REM dreams? (P. 152)
a) REM- more likely to be bizarre, involve intense emotions, visual and auditory hallucinations, and an uncritical acceptance of illogical events. May be due to the activation and deactivation of different brain regions. In REM sleep there is a deactivation of the prefrontal cortex and activation of visual and reward regions of the brain. b) Non-REM- characterized by more boring and mundane activities. Overall more deactivation of the brain.
30) Describe the following sleep disorders: (P. 148)
a) Insomnia- a sleep disorder in which people's mental health and ability to function are compromised by an inability to sleep. 12-20% of adults suffer from this disorder. It is more common in women and older adults. The most successful treatment for this disorder combines medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. CBT should help people overcome their worries about not being able to sleep, which should allow them to eventually come off medication. i) Pseudoinsomina- a person dreams they are not sleeping. b) Obstructive sleep apnea- the sleeper's throat closes for some time causing them to stop breathing for short periods. In struggling to breathe, the person usually wakes for brief periods that they do not recall the next morning, but leads to a restless sleep. This is most common in middle-aged men and is associated with obesity and loud snoring. For severe cases, the person is prescribed a continuous positive airway pressure device. c) Narcolepsy- excessive sleepiness during normal waking hours. A person may experience the muscle paralysis that occurs with REM. May be a genetic condition that affects the neural transmission of a specific neurotransmitter in the hypothalamus. It may also be an autoimmune disorder. Treatments include stimulants and protein immunoglobulin. d) REM behavior disorder- the normal paralysis that occurs with REM does not occur. Suffers may act out their dreams while sleeping. No treatment exists and the disorder is caused by a neurological deficit most often seen in elderly males. e) Somnambulism- sleepwalking. Most common in young children. Occurs during slow-wave sleep.
33) Why is an all-nighter a bad idea and what theory of sleep does this support? (P. 151)
a) It is associated with decrease in hippocampal function the next day. The hippocampus is essential to memory. This supports the Facilitation of Learning Theory.
23) What is your brain still doing while you are asleep? (P. 145)
a) It is still processing information such as potential dangers. It is still controlling body movements, so that it can maximize comfort (this is why you shift positions in your sleep) and it remains aware of the edges of the bed (although this may be learned).
14) Why did we evolve sensory adaptation? (Pg. 178-179)
a) It was important for us to be able to detect changes because they may require an immediate response.
1) What are the Marks of Cain?
a) Lombroso thought criminal offenders could be identified by minor physical abnormalities like low hanging ears, one palmer crease and larger space between their big toe and the next toe.
5) What hormones and neurotransmitters have been associated with an increased likelihood of aggressive and antisocial behaviors?
a) Low levels of cortisol, increased testosterone, low levels of serotonin especially in cerebrospinal fluid, reduced monoamine oxidase levels in the brain.
6) Why is the relationship between low levels of testosterone and reduced levels of monoamine oxidase contradictory? What does this suggest about future work?
a) MAOA is an enzyme that breaks down serotonin, so you would expect with reduced levels of MAOA an increase in serotonin levels, which is not what findings suggest for aggressive behaviors. b) This demonstrates the need for studies that simultaneously examine multiple biological markers in order to figure out how neurotransmitters interact with each other to increase the risk of aggression.
2) Describe the genetics of antisocial and aggressive behaviors. What kinds of studies are used? Which type of study has been the most illuminating? Is there a single gene responsible?
a) Meta-analyses place the heritability of antisocial and aggressive behaviors between 40-60%. This is consistent across gender and ethnicity. b) Twin studies- reared together and apart. Adoption studies. c) Adoption studies because they allow researchers to really disentangle genetic and environmental factors. d) No. It is a combination of a large number of gene variants that increase risk for aggressive behaviors.
8) In the change blindness video, what did the researchers hypothesize may account for the 25% of people that did notice the person behind the counter handing them the form was different than the person that gave it back?
a) Most likely just a coincidence. They happened to notice some feature they found odd about the first person's appearance- something caught their attention.
2) What are the two types of response biases in SDT?
a) Nay-sayers and yea-sayers
9) Explain the two visual pathways and how they relate to Blind Sight.
a) Newer Evolutionarily- travels from the eyeball through the thalamus and on to the visual cortex (conscious). The evolutionarily older pathway goes to the brain stem and from there visual information eventually gets relayed to higher brain areas- it is associated with reflexive behaviors (unconscious). b) Blind Sight occurs when the evolutionarily new pathway is damaged, but the old pathway is fine. This teaches us that vision is not entirely seeing. There can be a disconnect between perceiving something and being visually aware of the same thing.
3) Does your brainwork like a camera or digital recorder? Why or why not? (Pg. 174)
a) No b) Our perception of the world results from brain processes that actively construct our experience from sensory experiences. Because it is a construction, it is not necessarily accurate.
35) Does REM produce dream states? (P. 152)
a) No. It is only linked with dream content.
3) What dietary supplement is correlated with antisocial behavior?
a) Omega 3
15) How long until someone can be diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state? (P. 140)
a) One month
8) What kind of stimuli can grab your attention away from anything else you are concentrating on? (P. 135).
a) Pain, stimuli that evoke emotions, potential threats, socially relevant stimuli
1) What is phantom limb? How can you treat learned paralysis?
a) Phantom Limb- when a body part is amputated or otherwise not present, but the patient feels and perceives the presence of the limb. b) With a mirror box
9) Give an example of qualitative and quantitative information regarding a specific stimulus. (Pg. 176)
a) Qualitative- if you are approaching a stoplight, the color of the light would be an example of qualitative information. b) Quantitative- the brightness of that light.
10) Explain the daylight savings time study and describe its significance.
a) Researchers examined the number of car accidents the Monday following turning clocks forward (lose an hour of sleep) in the spring and turning clocks backward (gain an hour of sleep) in the fall. They found that there were significantly more car accidents following the loss in one hour of sleep (spring change). This is supposed to be suggestive of sleep deprivation.
31) Why do we sleep? Explain the 3 theories behind why we sleep and the evidence for each. (P. 148-151)
a) Restoration Theory- evidence for this exists from natural and experimental sleep deprivation studies. Sleep allows the brain to restore and repair itself, as well as the rest of the body. b) Circadian Rhythm Theory- sleep has evolved to keep animals quiet and inactive during times of the day when there is the greatest danger, usually when it is dark. The evidence for this theory comes in the form of the amount of hours each type of animal spends sleeping relative to their vulnerability and time of vulnerability. c) Facilitation of Learning Theory- scientists have found that neural connections made during the day, which serve as the basis of learning, are strengthened during sleep. Evidence supporting this includes people recall better on memory tasks after sleep, students who study more experience more REM sleep, and pulling all-nighters is detrimental to the hippocampus, which is essential in memory.
37) Know Figure 4.19 and the brain regions associated with REM dreams (P. 153)
a) Self-explanatory
12) Know the scientific thinking box and the study it represents on P. 139
a) Self-explanatory and also there is a sample exam question about this study.
4) What is the difference between sensation and perception? (Pg. 174)
a) Sensation- the detection of physical stimuli and transmission of that information to the brain. b) Perception- the brains further processing, organization and interpretation of sensory information.
7) What is the difference between sensory coding and transduction? (Pg. 175)
a) Sensory coding- sensory systems translate the physical properties of stimuli into patterns of neural impulses. b) Transduction- the translation of stimuli into signals the brain can interpret
13) Know figure 5.8. What is SDT? What are the payoff matrices? (Pg. 178)
a) Signal Detection Theory- detecting a stimulus is a subjective decision with two components: (1) sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of distractions from other stimuli and (2) the criteria used to make the judgment from ambiguous information. b) Hit (A stimulus is presented and the participant detects it), Miss (Failure to detect a presented stimulus), False Alarm (Detection of a stimulus that was not presented), Correct Rejection (Stimulus is not presented, and participant does not detect it).
32) How does sleep deprivation affect the body and mind? When is sleep deprivation useful? (P. 149)
a) Sleep deprivation has little effect on strength, athletic ability or performance on complex tasks after a few days. However, people deprived of sleep have difficulty performing quiet tasks like reading, and find it impossible to perform boring or mundane tasks. After a longer period of sleep deprivation, there are decreases in cognitive performance, increases in irritability and accumulation of metabolic by-products of neural activity eventually leading to death. Sleep deprivation also makes people more likely to experience micro-sleeps, which is when they fall asleep during the day for a period of a few seconds up to a few minutes. b) When people suffer from depression, sleep deprivation can act similarly to an SSRI by increasing the amount of serotonin in the brain.
2) What factors have been associated with an increased predisposition for violence and crime?
a) Smoking during pregnancy, fetal alcohol syndrome, poor social circumstances and poor prenatal nutrition.
1) What is Lombroso's Legacy?
a) Stopping crime before it starts with advanced prediction and treatment efforts.
21) Name and explain the brain regions involved in producing and maintaining circadian rhythms. (P. 145)
a) Suprachiaskatic nucleus- sends signals to the pineal gland. The pineal gland responds by secreting melatonin. Melatonin travels through the bloodstream affecting different receptors throughout the body, including the brain and can cause sleep. How melatonin induces sleep is unknown.
38) What was Hobson and McCarley (1977) theory about dreams? What did they add in 2000?
a) The Activation-Synthesis Theory: random brain activity occurs during sleep and this neural firing can activate mechanisms normally interpreted as sensory input. The sleeping mind tries to make sense of this input by synthesizing it with stored memories. Thus, dreams are the side effects of mental processes produced by random neural firing. b) Activation of the limbic regions (think amygdala) as the source of dreams emotional content and the deactivation of the prefrontal cortex contributes to the delusional and illogical aspects of dreams.
6) What is attention?
a) The ability to focus on stimuli. The filtering system that makes it possible to find out what is most pertinent to you and in your environment.
8) What is poor autonomic fear conditioning and what may it reflect?
a) The ability to learn associations between neutral cues and aversive stimuli. b) Abnormalities in a common core fear network that consists of the amygdala, insula and anterior cingulate. Many brain-imaging studies show abnormalities in these regions with people that have been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder.
17) What is brain death? (P.141)
a) The irreversible loss of brain function.
3) What is epigenetics and how has it informed Neurocriminology research?
a) The study of biological mechanisms that will switch genes on and off dependent upon environmental inputs. b) Epigenetics has shown that the environment can influence how genes are expressed in an individual, which undermines arguments of biological determinism of criminal and antisocial behaviors.
22) People sleep less as they age and some people only need an hour or two of sleep. How are these people different? (P. 145)
a) They possess a gene called SLEEPLESS, which regulates a protein that reduces action potentials in the brain. Loss of this protein leads to the need for 80% less sleep than the average person.
8) What role do sensory receptors play? (Pg. 176)
a) They receive the physical or chemical stimulation and pass the resulting impulses to the brain.
11) Describe subliminal perception. When are subliminal messages most likely to work? Describe Bargh et al. (1996). (P. 138)
a) Unconscious cues. Subliminal perception occurs when stimuli get processed by sensory systems but, because of their short duration or subtle forms, do not reach consciousness. b) When they target motivational states (e.g. thirst) c) Participants were provided with different word groups and asked to form sentences. Some of the participants were supplied with words that were associated with old age. When participants were leaving the experiment, the researchers timed how quickly they walked. Those that were primed with elderly words walked significantly more slowly than those that were not.
10) What is a Freudian slip? Do most scientists believe Freudian theory today? Why or why not? (P. 137)
a) When an unconscious thought is suddenly expressed at an inappropriate time or in an inappropriate social context. b) No. But most do agree that the unconscious mind does influence thoughts and actions. c) Because most of his studies of the unconscious are not falsifiable.
25) What are the stages of sleep and what brain waves are associated with them? (P. 146)
a) When people are awake, they show beta waves. b) When people enter stage 1 of sleep, the EEG shows theta waves. People can easily be aroused during this state and will deny they were ever asleep. c) Stage 2- breathing becomes regular and people become less sensitive to outside stimulation. They continue to exhibit theta waves, but also show occasional bursts of activity called sleep spindles and large waves called K complexes. d) Stages 3 and 4 are considered much the same today. This period is marked by large regular brain patterns called delta waves. This is referred to as slow-wave sleep and it is very difficult to wake someone up during this stage. e) Rapid Eye Movement (REM)- characterized by a flurry of beta waves, which remember usually are present when awake. The occipital cortex and brain stem are more active during REM than when awake.
2) Give examples of synesthesia and estimates of its prevalence. People that experience synesthesia are more likely to be _______ than people they do not. (Pgs. 173-174)
a) Whenever someone sees road signs, they taste like pistachio ice cream and earwax. Whenever someone looks like a photograph, they hear music. b) Dates back to ancient Greece. Estimate prevalence range from 1-2,000 to 1 in 200. c) Creative
2) Does repeated violent offending meet the criteria of a Mental Disorder as defined in the DSM-5?
a) Yes. Violent offenders have abnormal function in terms of how they think, feel, and behave. Violence and aggression germinates earl n life during neurodevelopment and also has a genetic basis. They are impaired in how they perform in life and their actions definitely cause distress to others and themselves.
17) What was George Miller's proposes working memory span? Is that still thought to be true? (P. 275)
a. 7 +/- 2 b. No, now we think it is more like four items
26) What is Premack's Principle and what are some applications of Premack's Principle? (P. 244)
a. A more-valued activity can be used to reinforce the performance of a less-valued activity. b. Parents use Premack 's Principle all the time. They tell their children, "Eat your spinach and then you'll get dessert."
11) Define extinction, spontaneous recovery, and stimulus generalization. (P. 230)
a. A process in which the conditioned response is weakened when the conditioned stimulus is repeated without the unconditioned stimulus. b. A process in which previously extinguished conditioned response reemerges after the presentation of the conditioned stimulus. c. Learning that occurs when stimuli that are similar but not identical to the conditioned stimulus produce the conditioned response.
2) Define learning (P. 222)
a. A relatively enduring change in behavior resulting from experience. b. There are three types of learning: Nonassociative, Associative and Observational.
1) What is Behaviorism? (P. 223)
a. A school of belief founded by John B. Watson, which stated that, the environment and its associated effects on animals were the sole determinant of learning. He built of the principle introduces by John Locke, tabula rasa- meaning blank slate or born knowing nothing.
41) What is prospective memory failure and example of? (P. 291)
a. Absentmindedness- inattentive or shallow encoding of events. Often result of falling to pay attention.
26) What is the central idea in spreading activation models? (P.282)
a. Activating one node will increase the likelihood that associated nodes will become active
32) What is procedural memory? (P. 287)
a. Also known as motor memory. A form of implicit memory. It involves motor skills, habits and other behaviors used to achieve goals, such as coordinating muscle movements to ride a bike. They are so unconscious that if you actually try to start thinking about them, movements can become uncoordinated.
25) Explain Allan Collins and Elizabeth Loftus's network of association's model of memory organization. (P. 281)
a. An item's distinctive features are linked so as to identify the item. Each unit of information in the network is a node. Each node is connected to many other nodes. The resulting network is like the linked neurons in your brain, but nodes are simply bits of information. b. Know Figure 7.16
32) Summarize how classical conditioning is dependent on the biology of organisms. (P. 250)
a. Animals have a hard time learning behaviors that run counter to their evolutionary adaptation. For example, raccoons are hardwired to rub food between their paws, as this raccoon is doing. They have trouble learning not to rub objects.
42) What form of amnesia did Patient H.M. display? (P. 292)
a. Anterograde- loss of the ability to form NEW memories
27) Define retrieval cue and encoding specificity principle (P. 282)
a. Anything that helps a person or non-human animal recall information stored in long-term memory b. Any stimulus encoded along with an experience can later trigger a memory of the experience
5) Classical and Operant conditioning are what type of learning process? (P. 226)
a. Associative
48) Why is repressed memory research so controversial? (P. 299-301)
a. Because we know people have false beliefs, children are more susceptible to false belief, and false beliefs can be implanted; for example, with hypnosis, and guided recall
30) What is behavior modification? Describe how operant conditioning is used to change animal and human behavior (P. 249-250)
a. Behavior modification is the use of operant conditioning to eliminate unwanted behaviors and replace them with desirable ones. b. Operant conditioning can be used in many settings on both animals and people to change, or modify, behavior. This use is termed behavior modification and includes the use of reinforcement and shaping to alter behavior. c. Token economies are a type of behavior modification in which secondary reinforcers, or tokens, are used. d. Applied behavior analysis is the modern version of behavior modification and makes use of functional analysis and behavioral techniques to change human behavior. e. Neurofeedback is a modified version of biofeedback in which a person learns to modify the activity of his or her brain.
8) How is epigenetics involved in memory? (P. 269)
a. Blocking Histone Deacetylases (HDAC) leads to increased memory. Unless something critical happens in the environment HDAC is turned on. When HDAC is turned on, memories cannot be stored.
25) Explain shaping and the method of successive approximations? (P. 242)
a. Building on Thorndike's law of effect and Watson's behaviorism, Skinner used shaping through successive approximations to mold the behavior of animals. With shaping, a person observes the behaviors of animals, providing reinforcers when they perform a required level. Successive approximations refers to the series of small steps leading to a desired behavior. Animal behavior can be shaped using successive approximations, but instinct can interfere with the process. This instinctive drift is the tendency for animals to revert to instinctual behaviors after a behavior pattern has learned.
18) What is one way to increase the amount of items you can hold in your working memory? Define this process. (P. 275)
a. Chunking- the process of breaking down information into meaningful units
31) Explain the concept of latent learning. (P. 251)
a. Cognitive learning theory states that learning requires cognition, or the influence of an organism's thought processes. b. Tolman found that rats that were allowed to wander in a maze but were not reinforced still showed evidence of having learned the maze once reinforcement became possible. He termed this hidden latent learning, a form of cognitive learning.
19) What does Siegal and his colleagues suggest leads to greatest drug tolerance? (P. 238)
a. Drug tolerance is greatest when the drug is taken in the same physical location as previous drug use. The body has learned to expect the drug in that location and then to compensate for the drug, such as by altering neurochemistry or physiology to metabolize it.
1) Who is associated with rehearsal?
a. Ebbinghaus. This was his famous experiment that showed the more times nonsense syllables were practiced on day 1, the fewer repetitions that were required to remember them on day 2
2) What is semantic encoding?
a. Encoding the MEANING of words results in better recognition later than visual or acoustic encoding
30) What does Vargha-Khadem et al. (1997) provide evidence for? How? (P. 286)
a. Episodic and semantic memory systems are separate b. 3 children suffered brain damage at different ages. They were able to recall facts and tested within normal IQ range, but they could not remember any personal events, like what they ate for lunch that day.
46) Give examples of source misattributions (P. 296)
a. False frame effect, sleeper effect, source amnesia and cryptomnesia
22) Who developed and what is the level of processing model? (P. 279)
a. Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhardt b. According to this model, the more deeply and item is encoded, the more meaning it has and the better it is remembered. They proposed different types of rehearsal that lead to different levels of encoding. These are maintenance and elaborative.
10) What is contiguity? (P. 229)
a. From his research, Pavlov concluded that the critical element in the acquisition of a learned association is that the stimuli occur together in time- that is contiguity.
36) Who was Herman Ebbinghaus?(P.289)
a. He developed the idea method of saving and through his experiments provided compelling evidence that forgetting occurs rapidly over the first few days after learning something and then levels off.
7) How did Kandel study the neural basis of nonassociative learning? (P. 225)
a. He used aplysia to study the neural basis of nonassociative learning. He showed that alterations in the functioning of the synapse lead to habituation and sensitization. A reduction in neurotransmitter release lead to habituation and an increase lead to sensitization.
1) Who was Patient H.M.? Describe his condition (Pgs. 265-266)
a. Henry Molaison. b. Doctors removed parts of his medial temporal lobe, including his hippocampus. This resulted in his loss of ability to remember new information for more than a few moments. However, he was still able to learn new motor skills (procedural memory). For example, in a task that required him to trace the outline of a star while looking in the mirror over three consecutive days, his performance got better with each day. Yet, he was unable to recall ever completing the task.
14) What is visual sensory memory called? What is auditory sensory memory called?
a. Iconic b. Echoic
31) What type of memory does classical conditioning utilize? (P. 287)
a. Implicit because these memories form without your awareness of them as they do not require conscious attention
33) What did Larry Jacoby's study on the false frame effect demonstrate about implicit memory? (P. 287)
a. Implicit memories can influence our life in subtle ways and change our beliefs and attitudes about people. In this example, just seeing a list of names led participants to inaccurately decide some names on a list the following day belonged to famous people because they implicitly remembered being exposed to those names prior.
28) Identify the four schedules of reinforcement. (P. 245-246)
a. In a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement, at least one correct response must be made within a set interval of time to obtain reinforcement. b. In a variable interval schedule of reinforcement, reinforcement follows the first correct response made after an interval of time that changes for each reinforcement opportunity. c. In a fixed ration schedule of reinforcement, a certain number of responses is required before reinforcement is given. d. In a variable ration schedule of reinforcement, a varying number of responses is required to obtain reinforcement.
10) Where does the actual storage of memories take place? (P. 270)
a. In the particular brain region engaged during the perception, processing and analysis of he material being learned.
4) What is the misinformation effect and who was the researcher famous for studying this?
a. Incorporating misleading information into one's memory of an event. b. Elizabeth Loftus
3) Compare Karl Lashley and Hebb's models of memory. Who was correct? How do we know? (P. 268)
a. Lashley tested rats' abilities to learn mazes and then removed parts of their brain to see how that affected their performance. Through this research, he concluded that memory is distributed throughout the brain and not limited to a specific area. This was called Equipotentiality. b. Hebb's model instead states that memories are stored in multiple regions of the brain, but these regions are linked through memory circuits. When one neuron excites another, some change takes place that strengthens the connection between the neurons. "Cells that fire together wire together." c. Hebb was correct and we know this because Eric Kandel (2001) showed that long-term storage of information results from the development of new synaptic connections between neurons.
28) What is a mnemonic device and what is the most popularly used mnemonic? (P. 283)
a. Learning aids or strategies that use retrieval cues to improve recall. b. Method of loci or memory palace- consists of associating items you want to remember with physical locations.
36) Describe vicarious learning and reinforcement. (P. 256-257)
a. Learning the consequences of an action by watching other being rewarded or punished for performing the action. Type of observational learning. Not the same as modeling.
3) What regions of the brain are the center for the processing of 1) explicit memories and 2) implicit memories
a. Limbic system/Hippocampus b. Hindbrain/cerebellum
5) What process is central to the neural basis of memory consolidation? (P. 268)
a. Long-term potentiation (LTP)- the strengthening of synaptic connection, making the postsynaptic neuron more easily activated.
9) What could drugs that affect NMDA receptors and HDAC potentially do? (P. 270)
a. May be able to help people learn more quickly or remember better. This may be useful for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's.
21) How can you apply knowledge of what gets into long-term memory to aid you in studying? (P. 277)
a. Memories are strengthened with retrieval. They become more durable. Thus, the best way to study is to practice retrieval (testing yourself). Rehearsal is a way to get some information into long-term memory, but simply repeated of re-reading something many times is not an efficient way to maintain that information long-term.
38) What are mirror neurons? (P. 259)
a. Mirror neurons are activated by watching others. Mirror neurons become activated when we observe others engaging in actions. In fact, the same neurons that become active when we observe another person engaging in a task become active when we perform the same task. Mirror neurons may be involved in learning about and predicting what others are thinking. They may also form the basis of empathy, the ability to understand the perspective of other people.
37) Summarize Mineka et al. (1984)'s findings with monkeys. (P. 258-259)
a. Monkeys raised in laboratories do not fear snakes. Monkeys raised in the wild do. Neither fear flowers. Mineka et al. asked; can lab monkey learn to fear snakes or flowers by seeing other monkeys exhibit a fear response to these things? The found yes for the snakes and no for the flowers. It appears monkeys are biologically prepared to fear certain objects, like snakes, but not others, like flowers. This is generalizable to other animals, including humans.
7) What receptor is involved in LTP? (Look at figure 7.6)
a. NMDA
34) Summarize what Bandura's classic Bobo doll studies teach us about learning. (P. 255)
a. Observational learning can occur when we watch a model demonstrate a behavior. Albert bandura's classic Bobo doll experiment showed that children readily imitate aggression when they see it modeled by adults. Studies suggest that children and adults may inclined to mimic aggressive behaviors seen in TV shows, movies, video games, and on the Internet. Observation of pro-social behaviors, on the other hand, can encourage kindness, generosity and other forms of behavior that benefit others.
3) Describe the process of observational learning and list the four elements of observational learning. (P. 224)
a. Observational learning is acquired by watching others perform or model certain actions. b. Bandura's famous Bobo doll experiment demonstrated that young children will imitate aggressive actions of a model even when there is no reinforcement for doing so. c. Attention, Memory, Imitation, and Desire
8) Identify the key elements of classical conditioning as demonstrated in Pavlov's classic experiment. (Pgs. 226-229)
a. Pavlov accidently discovered the phenomenon in which one stimulus can, through pairing with another stimulus, come to produce a similar response. He called this "classical conditioning." b. The unconditioned stimulus (US) is the stimulus that is naturally occurring and produces the innate, or involuntary, unconditioned response. Both are called unconditioned because they are not learned c. The conditioned stimulus (CS) begins as a neutral stimulus but when paired with the unconditioned stimulus, it eventually begins to elicit an involuntary, and automatic behavior on its own. The response to the conditioned stimulus is called "conditioned response:, and both stimulus and response are learned. d. Pavlov paired a sound with the presentation of food to dogs and discovered several principles for classical conditioning. The conditioned stimulus and the unconditioned stimulus must be paired several times and the conditioned stimulus must PRECEDE the unconditioned stimulus by only a few seconds. e. Other important aspects of classical conditioning include stimulus generalization, stimulus discrimination, extinction, spontaneous recovery, and higher-order conditioning.
29) Identify the effect that punishment has on behavior. (P. 246)
a. Punishment is any event or stimulus that, when following a response, makes that response less likely to happen. b. In punishment by application, a response is followed the application or experiencing of an unpleasant stimulus, such as spanking. c. In punishment by removal, a response is followed by the removal of some pleasurable stimulus, such as taking away a child's toy for misbehavior. d. A person who uses aggressive punishment, such as spanking, can act as a model for aggressive behavior. This will increase aggressive behavior in the one being punished, which is an undesirable response. e. Punishment of both kinds normally has only a temporary effect on behavior. f. Punishment can be made more effective by making it immediate and consistent and by pairing punishment of the undesirable behavior with reinforcement of the desirable one.
27) Describe continuous reinforcement and partial reinforcement. (P. 245)
a. Reinforcers can be delivered on a constant basis (continuous reinforcement) or intermittently (partial reinforcement). Continuous reinforcement is generally more effective for establishing a behavior, whereas learning through partial reinforcement is more resistant to extinction and useful for maintaining behavior.
34) What is prospective memory? (P. 287)
a. Remembering to do something at a future time. It involves both automatic and controlled processes. Retrieval cues and post-its are handy.
16) What three processes are used in updating working memory? (P. 274)
a. Retrieval, transformation and substitution
24) Differentiate between primary and secondary reinforcers and positive and negative reinforcement. (Pgs. 241-244)
a. Skinner developed the concept of reinforcement, the process of strengthening a response by following it with a pleasurable, rewarding consequence. b. A primary reinforcer is something such as food or water that satisfies a basic, natural device, whereas a secondary reinforcer is something that becomes reinforcing only after being paired with a primary reinforce. c. In positive reinforcement, a response is followed by the presentation of a pleasurable stimulus, whereas in negative reinforcement, a response is followed by the removal or avoidance of an unpleasant stimulus.
5) What is William Jackson an example of?
a. Someone that was wrongly convicted on the basis of eyewitness testimony. There needs to be more evidence beyond eyewitness testimony because memory is a constructive process, people have false memories, and memories are easily implanted as shown by Loftus' work.
24) What is a schema? (P. 280)
a. Structures in long-term memory that help us perceive, organize, process and use information.
11) What is the process of reconsolidation? What clinical application may this have? (P. 271)
a. Term proposed by Nader and LeDoux that suggests once memories are activated, they need to be consolidated again to be stored back in memory. Thus, when memories of past events are retrieved, those memories can be affected by current circumstances, so the newly reconsolidated memories may differ from their original versions. This may explain why memories are able to change over time. b. We could erase bad memories by activating then and then interfering with their reconsolidation. Is this ethical? What do you think?
18) What was the Little Albert Experiment? (P. 236)
a. The case study of Little Albert illustrated that the conditioned emotional response, an emotional reaction (fear in this case) is acquired via classical conditioning. When Little Albert heard a loud bang (US), he exhibited a fear response (UR). Through conditioned, the sight of a rat became paired with the loud noise and went from being a neutral stimulus to a CS. Little Albert's fear of the rat became the CR and generalized to stimuli that looked similar. This was done by John B. Watson.
45) What is memory bias? What are flashbulb memories? How accurate are flashbulb memories? (P. 295-296)
a. The changing of memories over time so that they become consistent with current beliefs and attitudes b. Vivid episodic memories for circumstances in which people first learned of a surprising, consequential or emotionally arousing event c. They are as accurate as any other memory, however people are more confident in these memories than others
44) What is persistence? Give a clinical example. What are possibly future treatment options? (P. 293)
a. The continual recurrence of unwanted memories. Emotional events are associated with amygdala activity, which may underlie the persistence of certain types of memories b. PTSD c. Propranolol- blocks the postsynaptic receptors for the neurotransmitter norepinephrine, which can reduce the usually hormonally enhanced fear response to an event or stimuli if taken directly prior to the exposure. i. HDAC as well. Has been tested in animals. Remember HDAC inhibition removes brake pads on memory formation so it may be possible to change or erase memories with HDAC and the process of reconsolidation.
22) Describe Thorndike's Law of Effect (P. 241)
a. The law of effect was important to the study of operant condition, a type of learning in which people or animals come to associate their voluntary actions with consequences. The law of effect states that if a behavior is followed by a pleasurable outcome, that behavior is more likely to reoccur. Thorndike's cats learned that if they escaped the puzzle box, they would get to eat fish; this increased the speed with which they opened the puzzle box.
19) What are the serial position effects? (P. 276)
a. The primacy and recency effects.
40) Give and example of blocking. Why does blocking likely occur? (P. 291)
a. The tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon b. Interference from words that are similar in sound or meaning to the one you want to think of, but that you use more often
12) Who are Richard Akinson and Richard Shiffrin? (P. 272)
a. They developed a three part model of memory that includes sensory memory, short-term memory and long-term memory
17) According to Shultz et al. (1997), how is dopamine and prediction error related? (Pgs. 234-235)
a. They first left monkeys thirsty and then unexpectedly the monkeys received fruit juice (US). This was a positive prediction error and associated with an increase in dopamine activity and the reward centers of the brain. b. The monkeys were then conditioned to associate the arrival of juice with the presentation of a light or tone. c. Once the monkeys have learned this association well, the reward regions of their brains showed a burst of dopamine activity in response to the light or tone but not to the delivery of the fruit juice because they had learned the light or tone predicted the deliverance of juice and were no longer surprised when the juice arrived. d. In additional trials, the juice was no longer given. The monkeys experienced a negative prediction error and the reward regions showed a reduction in dopamine activity.
2) Describe the Information Processing Model. Know Figure 7.3 (P. 267)
a. This model consists of 3 phases i. Encoding- information is acquired and processed into neural code ii. Storage- information is stored in the brain 1. Consolidation- neural connections that support memory become stronger, and new synapses are constructed. Through the process of consolidation, encoded information becomes stored in memory iii. Retrieval- information is retrieved from memory when it is needed
13) What is the Rescorla-Wagner model? What is a positive prediction error? What is a negative prediction error? (P. 233)
a. This model states that an animal learns an expectation that some predictors (potential conditioned stimulus's) are better than others. According to this model, the strength of the CS-US association is determined by the extent to which the US is unexpected or surprising. This difference between the expected and actual outcomes is termed prediction error. b. Suppose that after a stimulus appears, something better than expected happed. This prediction error is considered positive. This will strengthen the association between the CS and the US. c. If an expected event does not happen, this leads to a negative prediction error. This will weaken the relationship between the CS and the US.
20) Identify the contributions of Thorndike and Skinner to the concept of operant conditioning? (P. 240)
a. Thorndike developed the law of effect: a response followed by pleasurable consequences will be repeated, but a response followed by an unpleasant consequence will not be repeated. b. B.F. Skinner named the learning of voluntary response "operant conditioning" because voluntary responses are what we use to operate in the world around us.
23) What is a Skinner Box? (P. 241)
a. Used to assess operant conditioning. It consists of a small chamber or cage. Inside, one lever or response key is connected to a food supply, and a second lever or response keys is connected to a water supply. The animal learns to press one lever or key to receive food and the other to receive water.
12) Apply classical conditioning to examples of phobias, taste aversions, and drug dependency. (P. 231, 235-237)
a. Watson was able to demonstrate that an emotional disorder called a phobia could be learned through classical condition by exposing a baby to a white rat and a loud noise, producing conditioned fear of the rat in the baby. b. Conditioned taste aversions occur when an organism becomes nauseated some time after eating a certain food, which then becomes aversive to the organism. c. Some kinds of conditioned responses are more easily learned than others because of biological preparedness. d. Pavlov believed that the conditioned stimulus became a substitute for the unconditioned stimulus through association in time. e. The cognitive perspective asserts that the conditioned stimulus has to provide some kind of information or expectancy about the coming of the unconditioned stimulus in order for conditioning to occur.
14) When does the blocking effect occur? (P. 233)
a. When a second CS is added to a conditioned trial with a previously learned CS. Say that a dog has learned that a metronome (CS1) is a good predictor of food (US). Now a flash of light (CS2) accompanies the metronome. There will be no prediction error, and the dog will not associate the light with the food because the light does not provide any additional information.
