Research Methods
This group is used in an experiment so we can compare the experimental manipulation to something.
What is a control group?
This subdivision of the cortex is most active on tasks involving planning, impulse control, and short-term memory
What is the prefrontal cortex (frontal lobe)?
The lowest level of a stimulus needed for the nervous system to detect a change 50 percent of the time
What is an absolute threshold?
Our subjective experience of the world, our bodies, and our mental perspectives
What is consciousness?
Form of learning in which animals come to respond to a previously neutral stimulus that had been paired with another stimulus that elicits an automatic response
What is classical conditioning?
The variable that an experimenter assesses or measures to determine whether or not the manipulation has had an effect.
What is the dependent variable?
The ability of the brain to regenerate and reorganize.
What is neuroplasticity?
This system responds to sensory information about touch, pain, and temperature.
What is the somatosensory system?
People with this sleep disorder sometimes fall asleep suddenly in the middle of a conversation.
What is narcolepsy?
Learning controlled by the consequences of the organism’s behavior
What is operant conditioning?
This type of research is more focused on understanding how things work, rather than future practical applications of the discovered knowledge.
What is basic research?
This type of brain imaging measures the amount of oxygen in the blood flow to different regions of the brain to identify what locations and networks are more active than others during mental tasks.
What is fMRI?
Failure to detect stimuli that are in plain sight when our attention is focused elsewhere
What is inattentional blindness?
People with this sleep disorder often wear a face mask device that forces air into the lungs during sleep.
What is sleep apnea?
This study technique involves spacing out your study time across multiple days rather than one long chunk.
What is spaced/distributed practice?
The perception of a statistical association between two variables where none exists
What is an illusory correlation?
This hemisphere of the human brain is most active during language-related tasks.
What is the left hemisphere?
Our sense of body position
What is proprioception?
Stage of sleep during which the brain is most active and during which vivid dreaming most often occurs
What is REM sleep?
A strategy in which bringing information to mind enhances and boosts learning. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge “out” and examine what we know.
What is retrieval practice?
A type of validity in which results of the study are due to the manipulation of the independent variable and not some other factor.
What is internal validity?
This system contains some of our emotional-regulation centers, including the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, and the amygdala.
What is the limbic system?
Conceptually driven processing influenced by beliefs and expectancies
What is top-down processing?
This type of brain imaging is used to identify patterns of brain activity during different stages of sleep.
What is EEG?
Superior retrieval of memories when the external context of the original memories matches the retrieval context
What is context-dependent learning?