PsychExam2 Flashcards
Perception
Organizing and interpreting sensory input
Sensation
Process of receiving stimuli from the environment, such as touch, feeling, hearing, and seeing. Basically anything physical.
Absolute threshold
Minimum stimulation that we can detect 50% of the time. Example: Sheldon adding moths to Leonard’s coffee.
Difference threshold
The minimum difference between two stimuli we can detect 50% of the time.
Habituation
Becoming accustomed to constant stimuli because we process a thousand different things every second and if we were to manually process it, it would take too long.
Top Down Processing
Where our knowledge of the world influences our interpretation.
Gestalt Theory
When given a cluster of sensations, people tend to organize them.
Proximity
Stimuli that occurs close together, we group them together.
Similarity
Sensations that are similar are grouped together.
Continuity
Links together sensations.
Connectedness
Group things that are touching or linked.
Figure ground
Where we use contextual cues to decide if something’s in the front (foreground) or it is in the background.
Linear perspective
Cues about distance and size based on parallel lines.
Perceptual Adaption
The ability to have our senses messed with and be able to adapt.
Perceptual Interpretation
Reality doesn?t matter, your perception does.
Perceptual Set
Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. What you think you know influences what you see.
Pareidolia
A specific aspect of a perceptual set. It makes sense out of chaos and can relate to auditory. Example: backward masking
Prosopagnosia
Ability to sense, but cannot perceive or make meaning. Example: no longer being able to identify faces.
Subliminal messaging
This only works for a second, it’s where messages are hidden in commercials, logos, etc.
Parapsychology
This is an example of perception without sensation. Has to deal with psychics.
James Randy
A researcher who tested psychics and their aura.
Virtual therapy
A treatment that helps burn patients recover as a distraction.
Phantom Limb pain
The feeling that a lost limb or appendage still has pain or presence.
Waking conciseness
Your immediate awareness of internal and external stimuli, it’s what you’re paying attention to.
Change and intentional blindness
Inability to recognize or see what’s in front of us.
Circadian rhythms
24 hour cycle that includes sleep and wakefulness that also relates to hunger and temperature. It’s also known as the biological clock and is most affected by light. Alterations in this affect mood and performance.
NREM 1
A stage of sleep that is the start of the sleep cycle where one is starting to nod off, the heart rate slows, and breathing is paced. If needed, one can come to if needed.
NREM 2
A stage of sleep where everything a little more, brain activity is slow and there is rheumatic breathing.
NREM 3 + 4
The stages of sleep where breathing and brain activity are at its lowest. These are also called slow wave sleep. This is also where one can move in a dream, sleepwalking occurs, as well as sleep talking. Waking up in this (mainly the latter) causes one to be disoriented, making them more harmful to those waking them up.
REM
Also known as rapid eye movement where one is able to dream. To prevent this, make sure to go through the REM stage.
Sleep deprivation/restriction
This affects memory, motor skills, and mood. A solution to this is to go through the REM stage.
Reoperation
A sleep theory that states that sleep is needed to repair and restore damaged neurons and to make connections.
Remembering
A sleep theory that states the sleep is needed to connect and process things from the previous day.
Growth
A sleep theory that states that sleep is needed to release hormones related to this. The hormones come from the pituary gland.
Dreams
These occur in the stages of NREM 3/4 and REM. It’s sensical in a sense that it goes over one’s day and seems realistic. In the REM part of these, dreams become weird or unrealistic.
Freud theory
A theory of why we dream. It involves the thought that we have primal urges that are suppressed and when we dream, we release them. There is meaning in all dreams that appears in latent content and manifest content.
Latent content
The meaning of dream objects such as the meaning of why you see your teeth in your dream.
Manifest content
What actually happens in the dream, its literal content.
Activation synthesis model
A theory of why we dream. It is there to activate random brain circuits while sleeping, this can help not focus on external stimuli. The brain fires random emotional and memory circuits and once it receives all of this stimuli, it tries to make sense of it by turning it into a story.
Alcohol
A sleep aid that reduces the quality of sleep and reduces the REM stage of sleep. That’s why when you blackout from too much of this, you can’t remember because the REM stage has not occurred and memories haven’t been recorded.
Sleeping Pills
A sleep aid that knocks you out, but it only makes you unconscious, which is not the same as REM. When you rely on creating this unconscious state, you don’t go through the sleep cycles.
Binging
This is an act where one tries to make up for sleep that was lost in the past day or week. When this occurs, the quality of REM is not as good, throws off sleep cycles, and kills circadian rhythm.
Drugs
Any chemical substance that alters consciousness.
Depressants
This type of drug inhibits brain activity, can come in the form of prescription drugs or alcohol.
Young, white, Catholic male
This demographic is more likely to abuse alcohol.