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Flashcards in Popular Psychology Deck (25)
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1
Q

What is inattentional blindness?

A
  • the phenomenon of not seeing things in one’s field of vision (sometimes when they are very noticeable) due to lack of attention a focus on other parts of the scene
2
Q

What is the phonological loop?

A
  • a brain process by which spoken language is heard (or written language is silently articulated) and kept fresh in short-term memory through continued repetition
  • e.g., when we try to remember a phone number by repeating it silently to ourselves
3
Q

How many different stimuli can we remember?

A
  • for differences along only one dimension (e.g., musical pitch, hue, etc.), about seven
  • Higher numbers of stimuli can no longer be reliably compared with previously experienced stimuli in memory (Miller, 1956)
  • for example, up to seven different weights can be reliably remembered simply by picking them up, but higher numbers result in wrong answers
4
Q

What part of his brain did H. M. (Henry Gustav Molaison) lose and why?

A

H. M. had both of his hippocampi (parts of the brain) removed as a treatment for intractable epilepsy.

(Scoville and Milner, 1957)

5
Q

What are the four main parts of the cerebral cortex?

A
  • frontal lobe
  • temporal lobe
  • parietal lobe
  • occipital lobe
6
Q

What is a supertaster?

A
  • a person who perceives tastes differently from most people
  • due to increased sensitivity to a special bitter chemical, called PROP
  • leads about 25% of people to intensely dislike certain foods, such as grapefruit, green tea, Brussels sprouts, etc.

(Drewnowski et al., 2001)

7
Q

What is the FFA?

A
  • the fusiform face area
  • located in the temporal lobe
  • responsible for quickly and automatically identifying faces (and possibly other familiar objects)
  • lesions (damage) to the FFA can result in prosopagnosia, the inability to recognize faces
8
Q

What parts of the brain tend to be different in homosexual men?

A

Certain parts of the hypothalamus (part of the brainstem) are smaller in homosexual men than in heterosexual men.

(LeVay, 1991)

9
Q

What is the implicit association test?

A
  • tests the strength of the connections we make between different concepts
  • uses a task that measures how quickly and accurately we classify items based on different criteria
  • used by some researchers to suggest it can lay bare implicit racist or sexist attitudes (Green et al., 2007, and others)
10
Q

What is a neurotransmitter?

A
  • a chemical that is released by neurons (brain cells) into the spaces between them
  • communicates information across different brain circuits
11
Q

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

A
  • the idea that the structure of language can influence the thought and behavior of its speakers
  • The consensus among linguists is that only some linguistic categories influence thinking
  • e.g., speakers of Russian (which has separate words for “light blue” and “dark blue” can categorize shades of blue faster than speakers of English (Winawer et al., 2007)
12
Q

What is the critical period for language?

A
  • the period of a child’s life during which a first language can be acquired fluently
  • approx. zero to six years old
  • supported by the inability of Genie to acquire fluent language (especially grammar) later in life
13
Q

What causes Alzheimer’s disease?

A

Several hypotheses exist, including:

  • amyloid beta deposits (peptides, composed of amino acids) in the brain
  • deficiency in acetylcholine, an important neurotransmitter
14
Q

What is synesthesia?

A
  • a condition in which the perception of stimuli in one modality(taste, smell, texture, color) provokes sensations in another modality
  • The most common type is grapheme-color synesthesia, where printed letters are perceived as being different colors
  • Other types include lexical-gustatory (word-taste) and taste-touch synesthesia
15
Q

What is the placebo effect?

A
  • A phenomenon whereby a patient experiences a therapeutic benefit as a response to a fake medical intervention she/he thinks is legitimate
  • thought to operate by activating endogenous opioids (natural painkillers) in the nervous system (Zubieta et al., 2005)
  • e.g., the prescription of a sugar pill (with no pharmacological effect) can provoke real improvement in a patient’s condition
16
Q

What is phantom limb syndrome?

A
  • The phenomenon of continuing to feel sensations from a limb or part of a limb that has been amputated
  • often involves extremely uncomfortable or painful sensations
17
Q

What is REM sleep?

A
  • the rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep
  • During this stage, the eyes are active (they are paralyzed during other stages)
  • Dreaming usually occurs during REM sleep
  • Up to a quarter of an adult’s sleep is REM sleep
18
Q

What is FOX P2?

A
  • a gene thought to be linked to the development of language
  • people with mutations of the FOXP2 gene often show language deficits, especially in articulating speech and using grammar (Enard et al., 2002)
19
Q

What are mirror neurons?

A
  • neurons (brain cells) hypothesized to activate when the organism either performs orsees another organism perform a certain physical motion (Rizzolatti and Craighero, 2005)
  • thought to be implicated in language learning, theory of mind (understanding the state of mind of other organisms), etc.
20
Q

What is fMRI?

A

functional magnetic resonance imaging, a way of picturing brain activity over time.

21
Q

What was the result of H.M.’s loss of the hippocampus?

A
  • suffered anterograde amnesia, losing the ability to form new memories about names and events that happened after his surgery
  • retained memory about names and events before his operation
  • retained the ability to form new memories about how to do tasks (the steps required, their order, etc.)
  • retained short-term memory
    (Scoville and Milner, 1957)
22
Q

What is the function of each of the four lobes?

A
  • frontal lobe (planning, inhibition)
  • temporal lobe (“what” processing, auditory and visual recognition, memory for objects and faces, speech processing)
  • parietal lobe (“where” processing, spatial perception, navigation, tough)
  • occipital lobe (vision)
23
Q

What are the names of two important transmitters and what purpose do they serve?

A
  • dopamine (involved in sensations of pleasure and reward, Parkinson’s disease, etc.)
  • serotonin (critical to sleep and appetite, involved in the action of opioids on the brain and depression, etc.)
24
Q

Why was a girl named Genie significant to language theory development?

A

Genie was abused and received very little linguistic or social interaction during the critical language-learning period.

25
Q

How does an fMRI work?

A
  • The brain is subject to a powerful magnetic field that polarizes (aligns) the hydrogen atoms in the water molecules present
  • A supplementary magnetic field alters this alignment briefly, but the hydrogen atoms are allowed to return to their previous state and the time required to realign is measured
  • Oxygenated blood causes a longer response to these magnetic pulses
  • The active parts of the brain are served by more fresh (oxygenated) blood and so are identified by the fMRI