psych 201 chap 6 and 7
Terms
undefined, object
copy deck
- consciousness
- an attribute of the mind related to awareness of ourselves and our environment
- iceberg analogy relating to humanmind
-
tip of iceberg(above water)=conscious mind (attention)
below water=unconscious mind (sleep and dream) - attention
- the strategic allocation of our limited mental resources
- what are the 2 modes of attention
- selective and divided
- selective attention
- ability to focus n one thing and ignore the other
- divided attention
- ability to perform multiple tasks at the same time
- Yantis (1998)
- describes attention point as being outside of the fixation point in the visible field
- example of selective attention
- not seeing the gorilla in the video with the ball passing.
- Examples of divided attention
- texting while driving, exercise while talking/reading, talking and walking.
- Problem with divided attention
- not in perceiving or responding, problem is "centra", selecting a response, memory retrieval.
- Does driving worse while on phone? why?
- yes, driving and talking both require central operations
- Stroop Effect
- color naming tasks (name ink, ignore word), compatible condition (ink matches word)EASY, incompatible condition (ink differs from word)DIFFICULT.
- what does stroop effect suggest?
- that reading is automatic
- good things about automacity
-
-allows us to focus on more important things
-make it possible to perform exceedingly dull tasks without going insane - downside to automacity
- difficult to stop automatic processing/irrelevant information, also difficult to teach things that have become automatic
- types visual neglect
- object-based and space-based
- object based visual neglect
- patients often neglect the left side of the object rather than the left side of the space
- examples of object based visual neglect
- only eat on one side of their plate, shave only one side of their face, run into furniture
- Cohen, Ivry, Rafael, and Kohn (1995)
- tested visual neglect patients, presenting stimuli in the neglected side of the visual space
- results of visual neglect studies
- neglected information not only perceived by the brain, but affected response, patients were not consciously aware of it
- Driver and Mattingley (1998)
- the occipital lobe is activated but parietal lobe isnt activated for visual neglect patients (perception and awareness are separate)
- subliminal
- below the threshold of awareness
- subliminal perception
- perception without conscious awareness, youre not aware of the stimulus but some part of your brain detected/identified it
- Pepsi cans with the word "sex" on them, or a dollar bill hidden in the lettuce on a KFC snackers commercial are examples of?
- subliminal perception
- Greenwald (1991)
- gave people mislabeled tapes claiming to subliminally help memory or self esteem. Conclusion- only the patients expectations mattered, not the subliminal message
- how much of our lives are spent sleeping?
- 1/3 of our lives
- staying awake for several days causes our brain to do what?
- lose its ability to function
- risks associated with sleep deprivation
- impaired concentration, fatigue and subsequent death, greater vulnerability, depressed immune system, emotional irritability
- Coren (1996)
-
examined the relationship between daylight savings time and traffice accidents.
-accidents increased after spring change due to loss of 1 hr of sleep
-decreased after fall due to gaining 1 hr of sleep - Reasons we sleep:
- controlled by internal "biological clocks", synchronized by the environment, light is particularly important, includes 4 cycles.
- 4 biological rhythms
-
1)Annual cycles (seasonal variation in appetite, sleep, and mood)
2) 28 day cycle (average length of female menstrual cycle)
3) 24 hour cycle (24 hour cycle of varying alertness, body temp, and growth hormone secretions, sleep and wakefulness
4) 90-minute cycles (varying stages of sleep repeat in 90 minute cycles) - How do we study sleep?
- EEG recordings, reveal changes in brain activity
- Alert and Awake stage
- brain produces low amplitude, fast (high frequency) irregular beta waves (15-30 cycles per second)
- Awake but relaxed stage
- brain activity slows to large amplitude, slow, regular alpha waves (9-14 cycles per second)
- example of an activity that would exhibit alpha waves
- a meditating person
- Alpha waves can be brought on by...
- watching tv
- sleep stages 1 and 2
- early, light sleep, the brain exhibits a high-amplitude low frequency wavelength (theta waves, 5-8 cps)
- daydreaming exhibits what wave?
- theta waves
- sleep stage 2
- theta waves have some K complexes and sleep spindles mixed in, reacts to some stimuli (loud noises), but isnt consciously aware of them
- sleep stages 3-4
- during deepest sleep, brain activity slows down. Large amp, slow delta waves, 1.5-4 cps. Often hard to wake
- Sleep stage 5
- REM sleep, sleep cycle begins to return to sleep stage 1, brain exhibits low amp, fast, regular beta waves (15-40 cps).
- REM
- rapid eye movement-a person in stage 5 sleep will move their eyes around rapidly
- progression of 90 minute sleep cycles throughout the night
- the duration of stage 4 sleep decreases and the duration of stage 5 (REM) increases as the cycles continue
- REM rebound
- when deprived of REM sleep and then allowed to sleep, we experience greatly increased amounts of REM sleep
- The sleep cycle
- cycle through stages, in order, 45 times a night. About 90 minutes per cycle, time in each stage varies, REM dominates late cycles, especially right before we wake.
- Best way to nap
- 20-30 minutes, because then sleep takes place only during stage 1 and 2. Waking up during any other stage is difficult and leaves you feeling disoriented
- 1-800-get-help or 1-800-com-cast are example of?
- how to increase short term memory capacity by using words rather than digits
- Working memory contains
- central executive and 2 subsystems (visual spatial sketch pad and phonological loop)
- Central executive
- select strategies, integrates information, and directs the flow of information, transfers information into long term memory, coordinates info between 2 subsystems
- Phonological Loop
- deals with acousti coding, stores and maintains auditory information through subvocal rehearsing
- visuospatial sketch pad
- deals with visual imagery, stores and maintains visual info through visualization
- Interference in memory takes places when
- two tasks require the same subsystem for processing
- Short term memory performance
- east to access, but not durable
- long term memory performance
- difficult to access, but highly durable
- Primary effect
- Better at recalling the beginning of a list because the first terms were more likely to be rehearsed (a LTM effect)
- Recency Effect
- Better at recalling the end of the list also because the last items were still in STM at the time of recall
- False memory (Roediger and McDermott 1995)
- many people believe that their memory is reliable, but in most cases they are mistaken
- Elizbeth Loftus
- says we reconstruct our memories, leading to fabrications
- Why do we forget things?
- encoding failure, storage decay, retrieval failure (interference)
- Encoding failure
- information was never encoded into long term memory.
- Not remembering what letters are next to T on a keyboard, or which penny or $10 bill is correct are examples of?
- encoding failure
- Storage Decay
- poor durability of stored memories lead to their decay
- retrieval failure
- although info is stored in LTM it cannot be assessed afterward. (information is in there but "buried" or in some way unavailable, interference
- 2 types of interference
- proactive interference and retroactive interference
- Proactive interference
- older information interferes with newer ones
- Taking french first, then taking spanish and recalling french words while trying to learn spanish is what type of interference?
- proactive
- Retroactive interference
- newer items interfere with older items
- Taking french, then taking spanish and being able to remember the french is what type of interference?
- retroactive
- Hippocampus
- inside of limbic system-involved in the formation and storage of memories
- cerebellum
- involved in the procedural memory and verbal working memory
- amnesia
- memory loss caused by trauma or neural degeneration(alzheimers)
- retrograde amnesia
- difficulty retrieving memories from before the trauma (typically just temporary result of injury)
- anterograde amnesia
- difficulty forming new memory after trauma (e.g. can enjoy same movie over and over again) tends to be permanent
- the plots of 50 first dates displays an example of what type of amnesia
- anterograde
- improving memory
- environment during encoding should match environment during retrieval
- mood dependent memory
- people recall better if they match their mood at encoding and retrieval
- state dependent memory
- material is easier to retrieve when people are in the same chemically intoxicated state as they were during encoding
- transfer appropriate processing
- encoding of information depends on how the information is expected to be used later on
- people do better on exams when the exam format matches their expectations, this is an example of?
- transfer appropriate processing