The Eye
What is stereopsis?
Binocular Depth Perception. The brain's ability to generate a 3-D view of the world from two flat retinal images that are different.
(Like how railroad tracks appear to get closer to one another as you look into the distance. The brain interprets this as the tracks being farther away from you.)
What is the cartilaginous outer portion of the ear called?
Pinna - collects sound
When do children start to store long-term memories and why?
3-4 years old.
The hippocampus is not fully formed until age 3-4, so children can learn but do not store long-term memories.
Name the four parenting styles.
Authoritative
Authoritarian
Permissive
Neglectful
What are teratogens?
Environmental factors that can negatively impact fetal development.
Examples: Caffeine, smoking, maternal stress, viruses, drugs
What are the two kinds of photoreceptors and in what part of the eye are they found?
Cones and rods.
Cones: Found mostly in the fovea, responsible for color vision
Rods: Found mostly in the retina, more sensitive
What is the purpose of the eardrum?
It changes airborne vibrations into mechanical vibrations.
What's a schema?
A mental map you create to store your experiences.
Ex: Fred has developed this schema for identifying a dog - A dog is a hairy four-legged creature with a tail. When Fred sees a cow for the first time, he calls it a "dog" since it fits his schema.
Two traits are used to describe the parenting styles. What are they and what do they refer to?
Responsiveness - refers to warmth and to what extent parents respond to children's needs/wants
Demandingness - refers to the extent to which parents expect obedience and responsible behavior
How are Alzheimer's Disease and dementia related?
Alzheimer's Disease is a specific form of dementia.
Alzheimer's: irreversible, impaired speech and thought, flat affect, confusion
Dementia: umbrella term for symptoms of brain degeneration (deficits or impairments with thinking, memory, and other faculties)
How is our eye similar to the camera obscura?
The eye works like a camera obscura - they are both a small chamber where light enters (via the cornea) and through a small hole (the pupil).
The iris controls the size of the pupil to let in more or less light: Smaller opening = clearer and dimmer image; Larger opening = blurrier and brighter image
Both project an upside down image.
Explain the difference between pitch and loudness.
Pitch = sound analog of frequency (higher frequency creates a higher pitch)
Loudness = sound analog of amplitude (louder sounds create bigger waves)
Name Piaget's four stages, including the age ranges of each.
Sensorimotor: 0-2 years
Preoperational: 2-6 years
Concrete Operational: 7-12 years
Formal Operational: 12-adult
The Permissive parenting style has low _____, and high _____.
Low demand, high responsiveness.
Parents are responsive to needs and provide children's wants, but do little to enforce rules or boundaries.
What is the difference between secure and insecure attachment patterns? What experiment was designed to study these patterns?
Secure: Infants readily explore new environments in the presence of their mothers
Insecure: Infants are anxious, avoidant, or both
The Strange Situation Study (1973)
List the six Gestalt Grouping Principles. Briefly explain what each is describing.
1. Phi phenomenon (perceived motion in stationary objects)
2. Figure ground (ability to distinguish nearby objects from surrounding background)
3. Closure (brain "fills in" gaps in an image)
4. Good continuation (brain assumes edges vary smoothly rather than abruptly)
5. Proximity (nearby objects are grouped together)
6. Similarity (similar objects are grouped together)
Name the ossicles. In what part of the ear are they located?
From superficial to deep: malleus, incus, and stapes (the hammer, anvil, and stirrup), located in the middle ear.
What is the difference between accommodation and assimilation?
Accommodation: The process of modifying a preexisting schema to incorporate new information. You change your existing ideas to take in new info. (Fred has a schema to identify dogs. However, it also fits cows. Fred must accommodate the fact that a cow is not a dog. He creates a new schema for identifying cows.)
Assimilation: The process of interpreting new information in terms of what we already know. You make new info fit into your current understanding of the world. (Fred sees a Golden Retriever for the first time and identifies it as a dog, even though his current schema for identifying a dog is based on a different breed. His schema for "dog" is now refined and improved.)
Describe the Harlow experiment and the implications it had on our understanding of infant attachment.
Study of attachment using rhesus monkeys. They were provided two mechanical "mothers" - one made of wire that produced food, and one covered in a soft cloth that produced no food. Results showed the monkeys spent more time with the cloth mother, despite it not producing food.
Implication: Attachment is based on more than meeting physical needs.
What is palliative care? What is its goal, and what does it emphasize?
Caring for people with serious illnesses. Goal is to improve the quality of life for patient and family members. It is tied to humanistic psychology and emphasizes the dignity of the individual.
What is the difference between bottom-up processing and top-down processing?
Bottom-up: visual processing stream from retina to cortex (we allow the stimulus itself to shape our perception w/o preconceived ideas)
Top-down: imposing expectations onto a visual image (we use our background knowledge and expectations/preconceived ideas to interpret what we see)
You hear a noise. The sound information is conveyed from your ear through your auditory nerve and reaches the cochlear nucleus and superior olive in your brain stem. Where does the signal go from there?
It is projected to the inferior colliculus in the midbrain, the geniculate nucleus in the thalamus, and finally to the primary auditory cortex.
Fred goes through Piaget's Stages as he grows up. What are some of the main things he experiences at each stage?
Sensorimotor Stage: Fred learns through senses and actions; no object permanence
Preoperational Stage: Fred can mentally hold pictures in his mind; cannot mentally operate objects; lacks understanding of conservation (he doesn't understand how two glasses of different shapes can have the same volume)
Concrete Operational Stage: Fred can perform mental operations so long as he has tangible materials to work with; he understands conservation
Formal Operational Stage: Fred can perform abstract mental operations; can systematically test all possibilities to a problem
What are the differences between Authoritative and Authoritarian parenting styles?
Authoritative: High responsiveness, high demand (warm, open to discussion and exceptions regarding rules and boundaries, but still enforces them)
Authoritarian: Low responsiveness, high demand (cold, strict and rigid with rules and boundaries, closed off to discussion)
As we age, which part of the brain atrophies? What does this mean for older adults?
The frontal lobe atrophies, which reduces impulse control.