Research Methods
An experimenter wants to test if age impacts how quickly children can solve a puzzles. To answer this, he compares the average speed of puzzle solving in a group of 3-year-olds to a group of 5-year-olds. What type of study design is this? Why?
Quasi-experimental - there is no random assignment; experimental groups are formed based on pre-determined characteristics (e.g., age)
Glial cells make up ____, a white tissue that coats the axon and speed up ____.
Myelin; neural communication
A patient has an impaired sense of balance and struggles to walk. He likely has an impaired ____.
Cerebellum (when you see "bellum" think "balance")
A teenager is really excited when she sees her crush arrive at a school dance. However, when the person gets closer, she realizes that it's a different person. According to Signal Detection Theory, the teenager experienced a ____.
False Alarm
Imagine you step onto a scale three times in 10 minutes. You see the same number every time. This means that your scale is _____.
Reliable - here, you can the same answer each time you step onto the scale
A researcher wants to see if a new brand of Nike shoes will improve basketball playing. She randomly assigns half of participants to wear the new shoes, and the other half of participants to wear a pair of sneakers from home. What type of study design is this? Why?
Experiment - the researcher is manipulating a variable and randomly assigning participants to different groups
Before a neuron receives a signal to fire, it is in a state of _____.
Resting potential - can think of it like a brand new battery -> charged and ready to go, but not actively being used yet!
A ____ is a distorted image of a person; its enlarged hands, lips, face, and tongue represent that there is more space in the sensory cortex devoted to those areas.
Homunculus
___ are the part of the eye responsible for color vision.
Cones
A researcher wants to measure artistic ability using an IQ test. Using IQ as a measure lacks _____.
Validity - IQ does not actually measure artistic ability; instead, it measure cognitive ability!
A researcher is testing how a new book reading intervention program influences language development. Half of participants are randomly assigned to receive new books weekly and are encouraged to read; the other half experience business as usual. At the end of the study, parents report the number of words their children say. What is the IV in the study? How is operationalized?
IV - intervention
IV operational definition - books + reading vs. business as usual
After a neuron fires, it needs time to restore its chemical balance before it can fire again. This restoration happens during the ______.
Refractory period - imagine you are running really fast and need a moment to catch your breath before you can run again. That break is an example of a refractory period!
A person who has face blindness (prosopagnosia) likely has an impairment in the ____ lobe of the brain.
Occipital lobe (more specifically the area known as the fusiform gyrus)
Imagine a lightbulb. The minimum about of light it projects that we need to see would be called the ___.
Absolute threshold
The ____ nervous system contains the brain and spinal cord, whereas the ____ nervous system includes the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord (like the nerves found in our arms and legs).
Central; peripheral
A researcher is testing how personality type influences academic performance. He compares the GPA for students who are high and low on extraversion (a personality trait). What is the DV in the study? How is it operationalized?
DV - Academic Performance
Operationalized - GPA
When neurons communicate chemically, _______ are released from vesicles in the pre-synaptic neuron and bind to receptor sites on the post-synaptic neuron.
Neurotransmitters
A person who has extremely high levels of anxiety likely has over-activation of the ____.
Amygdala
When sound waves hit the ear and are converted into neural energy, a person is experiencing ____.
Transduction
The _____ is a set of brain structures that are highly active in regulating emotion and processing reward.
Limbic System -> note that the limbic system develops fully before the frontal lobe, so sometimes teenagers may make decisions with their emotions before thinking through consequences!
A researcher finds that the more Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) a person has, the more likely they are to experience problems with learning in school. This is an example of a _____ correlation.
Positive
When a neuron is myelinated, it has breaks in the myelin sheath that allow the electrical message to jump from one node of Ranvier to the next. This process is known as ____.
Saltatory conduction
Patient H.M. had a surgical lesion to his brain to help control seizures. After the surgery, he regularly struggled with his memory. Which area of his brain was likely severed during surgery?
Hippocampus
What causes blind spots?
The axons of ganglion cells (a type of neuron in the eye) bundle together to relay information to the visual cortex. The bundle of nerves must leave the eye, which causes the blind spot.
Most sensory information is routed through the ____ before being sent up to the cortex to be perceived.
Thalamus