Unit 1
what is debriefing?
increases the level of nervous system activity
what are stimulants?
the process in which changes in the sensitivity of sensory receptors occur in relation to the stimulus
what is sensory adaptation?
a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try.
a general rule based on our experience that we use to judge and make decisions, often leads to errors ("rule of thumb")
what is heuristic?
The __________ variable is the one that gets manipulated (such as how much is used). The _________ variable is the one that changes and is being measured.
this part of the brain controls emotions
what is the amygdala?
this gives us our color vision
what are cones?
a mental representation of the layout of one's environment
what is cognitive map?
When this occurs, the information doesn't get into memory in the first place so you are unable to retrieve it.
what is encoding failure?
perspective that focuses on the individual and self-actualization
what is humanistic perspective?
a trance-like mental state in which people experience increased attention, concentration, and suggestibility
what is hypnosis?
the visual processing center of the brain
what is the occipital lobe?
immediate and clear learning or understanding that takes place without overt trial-and-error testing,
what is insight learning?
when it becomes harder to recall new information because of old information in the past
what is proactive interference?
when some members of a group are systematically more likely to be selected in a sample than others
what is sampling bias?
a condition resulting from surgery that isolates the brain's two hemispheres by cutting the fibers (mainly those of the corpus callosum) connecting them
what is split brain?
the theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision (ex. some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red)
what is opponent-process theory?
patterns that define how often reinforcement will occur for a desired behavior
what are reinforcement schedules?
a phenomenon in which exposure to one stimulus influences how a person responds to a subsequent, related stimulus
what is priming?
those that affect other variables in a way that produces distorted associations between two variables
what are confounding variables?
______ scan uses a radioactive drug (tracer) to show both normal and abnormal metabolic activity. ______ scan uses a magnetic field and computer-generated radio waves to create detailed images of the organs and tissues in your body.
what is PET; MRI?
this theory explains how non-painful input closes the nerve "gates" to painful input, which prevents pain sensation from traveling to the central nervous system
what is gate-control theory?
an operant conditioning procedure in which reinforcers guide behavior towards closer and closer approximations of the desired behavior
what is shaping?
the proposal that the particular language one speaks influences the way one thinks about reality
what is Benjamin Whorf’s linguistic hypothesis