Localised function of Brain
The neurotransmitter and hormone involved in stress responses.
Epinephrine or Adrenaline
What are the 3 biological influences on visual perception?
Bonus points if you can provide an example of each!
Physiological make-up, Ageing (presbyopia, Floaters, cataracts, age-related macular degeneration, glaucoma), genetics (inherited visual disorder, congenital visual disorder, colour vision deficiency, retinis pigmentosa.)
What are the two main types of long term memory?
Implicit (procedural) and explicit (episodic, semantic)
recall the unconditioned stimulus (UCS), unconditioned response (UCR), neutral stimulus (NS), conditioned stimulus (CS) and conditioned response (CR) in Pavlov's dog experiment
UCS = Food
UCR = Salivating
NS = Bell
CS = Bell (after being paired with food)
CR = Salivating (from bell)
What memory model was proposed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) and what are the four components?
working model of memory - the central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer
Who am I?
I am the largest lobe in the brain
I have several functions - initiating movement of body, language, planning, judgement, problem-solving, aspects of personality and emotions
Frontal Lobe
What are the two main categories of depth cues?
Binocular depth cue and monocular depth cue
Describe the difference between encoding and retrieval.
Encoding is the process of putting information into a form that will allow it to fit within your personal storage system.
Retrieval is the process of getting information back from long-term memory to be used in working memory.
What is vicarious conditioning?
learning behaviours, attitudes, and emotional responses by observing others, rather than through direct experience. It involves learning from the consequences others receive for their actions, which can either reinforce or punish a behaviour.
Describe learned fear responses referring to Watson & Rayner (1920) the ‘Little Albert’ experiment
Bonus points! - describe stimulus generalisation and discrimination based on this study
Watson and Rayner paired a neutral stimulus (a white rat) with a frightening, unconditioned stimulus (a loud, sudden noise), and the child, "Little Albert," developed a conditioned fear response to the rat. This learned fear was also shown to generalise, causing Albert to fear other white, furry objects such as a fur coat and a rabbit, even without the loud noise. Discrimination occurs when the individual only responds to the conditioned stimulus (the white rat) and not to other similar stimuli (like the rabbit or fur coat).
What is the purpose of the hippocampus and where is it located?
Finger-sized curve structure that lies in the medial temporal lobes. Responsible for consolidation of explicit memories and acts to transfer these to other parts of the brain for storage as long-term memory.
Explain the ames room illusion.
The room is a trapezoid, when viewed with one eye it appears square so the one individual seems giant and the other seems small. If viewed with two eyes, it does not work because of binocular depth. Shape constancy over size constancy.
Define Short-term memory, providing the capacity and duration.
A store that receives information from the long-term and sensory stores. It has a limited capacity of 5-9 pieces of information and a duration of approximately 12-20 seconds.
Describe extinction and spontaneous recovery in classical conditioning.
Extinction is the gradual weakening and disappearance of a learned behaviour when the stimulus is no longer associated with the response. Spontaneous recovery is the reappearance of that extinguished behaviour after a period of rest, which often occurs unexpectedly. Eg. bell no longer elicits drooling (extinction), then unexpectedly bell causes dog to drool again (spontaneous recovery)
What variable did Grant et al. (1998) manipulate in their study, and what was the main finding?
Learning/testing environment (Silent v noisy)
Recall was better when learning and testing environments matched — showing context-dependent memory.
Explain inhibitory synapses and provide the neurotransmitter associated
When the target cell is caused to become inhibited and less likely to fire and cause an action potential. GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid).
What constitutes our perceptual set, and how can this influence visual perception?
Perceptual set biases perception by shaping what we expect to see, demonstrating that perception is an active, interpretative process influenced by psychological factors.
Past experience – prior exposure shapes how we interpret similar stimuli.
Context – the situation or environment provides cues about what we expect to see.
Motivation – our desires or needs can bias perception (e.g., a hungry person perceives food signs more vividly).
Emotional state – mood can influence interpretation (e.g., fear can make shadows appear threatening).
What are 3 causes of forgetting?
Bonus points - provide one method to improve memory!
encoding failure, retrieval failure, interference effects
chunking, rehearsal (maintenance and elaborative) and mnemonics (method of loci and SQ4R method — survey, question, read, recite, relate, and review).
Distinguish between primary and secondary socialisation.
Primary - learning beliefs, customs and behaviours from those closest to you (parents, close family members, friends)
Secondary - learning beliefs, customs and behaviours form outside the home groups (teachers, extended family, friends and media)
Summarise the findings of Hudson (1960) and explain how cultural experience influenced participants’ interpretation of depth cues.
Hudson (1960) showed participants from Western and African cultures two-dimensional drawings with depth cues. Western participants, familiar with pictorial depth cues like size and overlap, interpreted the hunter as aiming at the distant animal. African participants, less exposed to such cues, saw the hunter aiming at the larger animal. This shows that cultural experience influences how depth cues are interpreted, demonstrating that visual perception is shaped by learning and environment as well as biology.
Which 3 areas of the brain is voluntary movement coordinated from?
Primary motor cortex, cerebellum, basal ganglia
Name and order the processes of visual perception.
Bonus points if you can explain each one!
reception (visible light spectrum); transduction (photoreceptors, receptive fields); transmission (visual cortex); selection (feature detectors); and organisation and interpretation (visual perception principles)
Explain the difference between the two stages of sensory memory, iconic and echoic memory.
Iconic memory - visual sensory memory, lasts for about 0.3 seconds
Echoic memory - auditory memory
Explain the difference between negative and positive reinforcement in operant conditioning
Negative - the removal, reduction or prevention of an unpleasant stimulus in response to a behaviour, increasing the chance that the behaviour will be repeated.
Postive - consequence that strengthens a response by providing a pleasant or satisfying outcome, increasing the likelihood that a behaviour will be repeated
Choose:
Draw and label a diagram showing neurotransmission
Outline the divisions of the human nervous system
CNS = brain, spinal cord
PNS = peripheral nervous system - autonomic & somatic
autonomic = parasympathetic & sympathetic