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Springbrook Highschool AP Psychology Flash Cards

Terms

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Consciousness
Different levels of awareness of one's thoughts and feelings.

Example: You know that you are conscious because you are aware of your own thoughts.
Controlled Process
Activities that require full awareness, take full attention, and usally interfere with other ongoing activities.

Example: Rockclimbling.
Automatic Processes
Activities that require little awareness, take minimal attention, and do not interfere with other ongoing activities.

Example: Breathing is an automatic process.
Altered states of Consciousness
These result from using such things as meditation, psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, or sleep deprivation and is an awareness that differs from the norm.

Example: Bill takes LSD and sees floating blocks that talk to him, he is experiencing an altered state of consciousness.
continuum of consciousness
A wide range of experiences, from being acutely aware and alert to being totally unaware and unresponsive.

Example: Bill is paying very close attention in class so he is at one end of the continuum while Will is asleep in class and is at the other end of the continuum.
Sleep
Consists of five different stages that involve different levels of awareness, consciousness, and responsiveness, as well as different levels of physiological arousal.

Example: Bill gets in bed at night and goes to sleep.
Dreaming
This is a unique state of consciousness in which we are asleep but experience a variety of astonishing visual, auditory, and tactile images.

Example: Bill goes to sleep and he dreams of puppies and sees them in full color and can even hear them bark.
Unconscious
The unconscious is a mental place that we are not aware of and can not voluntarily access to recall memories, thoughts, or feelings.

Example: Bill is molested as a child and he puts the memory in his unconscious so that he doesn't have to deal with it.
Implicit (non declarative) memory
This is mental and emotional processes that we are unaware of but that bias and influence our conscious feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

Example: Bill can not recall the complex motor movements his feet make as they walk down stairs because such motor memories are stored in implicit memory.
Unconsciouness
This can result from disease, trauma, a blow to the head, or general medical anesthesia, and results in total lack of sensory awareness and complete loss of responsiveness to one's environment.

Example: Bill's goal in boxing is to knock out his opponent with a quick blow to the head that produces a temporary state of unconsciousness.
Biological clocks
These are internal timing devices that are genetically set to regulate various physiological responses for different periods of time.

Example: One of bills Biological clocks decides when he goes to the bathroom.
circadian rhythm
A biological clock that is genetically programmed to regulate physiological responses within a time period of 24-25 hours.

Example: Bills circadian rhythms control when he feels sleepy or not.
suprachiasmatic nucleus
One of the many groups of cells that make up the hypothalamus. This is a sophisticated biological clock that regulates a number of circadian rhythms, including the sleep-wake cycle.

Example: Without the suprachiasmatic nucleus working properly, Bill would have very messed up sleep-wake rhythms and could get sick or die.
interval timing clock
Can be started and stopped like a stopwatch and gauges the passage of seconds, minutes, or hours. This helps creatures time their movements. This is located in the basal ganglia in the brain.

Example: Bill knows to stop running because his interval timing clock is telling him that he has been running for 10 minutes and that is all he wanted to run for.
Jet Lag
A state experienced by travelers in which their biological circadian clock is out of step with the external clock time at their new location. This results in fatigue, disorientation, lack of concentration, and reduced cognitive skills

Example: Bill flys from the west coast to the east coast and ends up disoriented, this is due to jet lag.
Light Therapy
The use of bright artificial light to reset circadian clocks.

Example: This can get you on local time after you experience Jet Lag
Melatonin
A hormone that is secreted by the pineal gland (located in the brain. Secretion increases with darkness and decreases with light.

Example: Melatonin can help people with chronically disrupted circadian clocks.
Stages of Sleep
Distinctive changes in the electrical activity of the brain and accompanying physiological responses of the body that occur as you pass through different phases of sleep.

Example: Rem is a stage of sleep.
Alpha Stage
The alpha stage is marked by feelings of being relaxed and drowsy. Alpha waves are low amplitude and high frequency.

Example: When you are lying in bed with your eyes closed but are not quite asleep yet.
Non-Rem Sleep
This is where you spend approximately 80% of your sleep time. This is divided into stages 1,2,3 and 4; each stage is identified by a particular pattern of brain waves and physiological responses.

Example: Non-rem is when you don't have rapid eye movement.
Stage 1 sleep
A transition from wakefulness to sleep and lasts 1-7 minutes. Marked by the presence of theta waves. You also start to lose responsiveness to stimuli.

Example: About 5 minutes after you get in bed at night.
Stage 2 sleep
First true stage of sleep. EEG's show sleep spindles.

Example: When awoken in this stage you remember being asleep.
Stage 4 sleep
Delta waves are present and growth hormone is secreted.

Example: About 40 minutes after you go to sleep.
REM sleep
This makes up the remaining 20% of your sleep time. REM stands for rapid eye movement because in this stage your eyes blink rapidly and show lots of movement. The same brain waves as when you are awake are present in this stage (beta waves)

Example: This is when you are dreaming.
REM behavior disorder
Muscles are not paralyzed during REM sleep so dreams can be acted out.

Example: A sleepwalker.
REM rebound
This is when you spend an increased amount of time in a REM state if you were deprived of REM time the night before.

Example: Bill doesn't sleep on night 1 so he spends extra time in a REM state the next night.
Questionnaire
A method for obtaining information by asking subjects to read a list of questions and and check off or rate their preferences for specific answers.

Example: A survey.
Morning person
Prefer to get up early and go to bed early and engage in morning activities.

Example: The people awake in first period.
Evening person
Prefer to get up late and go to bed late and engage in nighttime activities.

Example: The person who goes clubbing every night.
Repair Theroy
Activities during the day that deplete key factors in our brains are replenished or repaired by sleep.

Example:Growth Hormone is released in stage 4 sleep and it controls many physiological aspects.

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