The Brain and Neurons
Long Term Memory
Consciousness
Operant v. Classical Conditioning
False Memories
100
The purple region of the brain
What is the cerebellum
100
This part of long term memory stores what you ate for lunch yesterday, your 16th birthday party, the day your sibling was born
What is episodic?
100
Generally speaking, if we are perceiving time, places and events as real and familiar we are in what?
Normal waking consciousness
100
The key ingredient of classical conditioning is to take a ______ stimulus and turn it into a ______ stimulus
What is neutral and conditioned
100
A white woman misidentifies an African American man out of a line up, that she believes to be the perpetrator of a crime. It turns out the real criminal, another African American male, has hardly any features that resemble the accused. What is one explanation for this?
What is own race bias?
200
I am a part of the brain that processes emotional responses, particularly threat responses
What is the Amygdala?
200
When you ride your bike using motor skills to get you to pedal and navigate but you avoid two particular streets out of fear of running into the neighbourhood magpies again you are using these two branches of memory
What is procedural and classical conditioning?
200
These two altered states of consciousness do not use a chemical substances to change perception but they do influence sensation, distortions in time perception, etc
What is hypnosis and meditation?
Bonus question: give one example of the other altered states stimulants and depressants
200
Use the principles of Operant Conditioning to explain drug addiction
Dopamine pathways positively reinforce drug use whilst withdrawal symptoms negatively reinforce use. (positive punishment to look at it in terms of giving up the habit)
200
This study highlighted the power of suggestion in creating a false memory. It showed how much language influences the way we remember things
What is the Loftus and Palmer 1974 "car crash" study
300
I play a crucial role in addiction by being the sites where drugs hijack the brain's reward system, leading to the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine.
What is the axon terminal?
300
Chris learned the names of all the countries in Europe for a geography exam at school. Years later he is asked to recall as many European countries as he can, but he struggles as he has not needed to recall this information for a long time. What type of memory store did he use to learn the countries in the first place and how can you best explain why he subsequently forgot them?
What is semantic memory and trace decay theory?
300
Our sleep-wake patterns change over a 24-hour period with sleepiness highest at night and lowest during the day. What is this rhythm called?
Circadian Rhythm
300
If you were to interview Little Albert 15 years after the experiments had taken place and you found he had no aversion or fear around white fluffy animals or objects what would you say had occurred?
What is extinction?
Bonus Question: What if extinction had occurred but Albert found himself back at the same lab and all of a sudden the sight of a white rat immediately brought the fear back. What would that be?
300
When asked to recall a vacation, you might remember details like a beach umbrella or seagulls even if they weren't present, because your memory fills in typical elements of a "day at the beach". Name this phenomenon
What is memory reconstruction?
400
A serious injury to this part of the brain resulted in Ava having a significant change in personality. She was calm and measured before the accident but was now struggling with decision making and impulse control
What the frontal lobe?
400
What is a real world example demonstrating Piaget's concepts of Schema, Assimilation and Accommodation? Make sure to include all three concepts in the one practical example
Answers will vary.
Bonus question: Can you give an example from early childhood and one from young adulthood where the learning is at the Formal stage
400
What is the difference between congruent and incongruent lists in a stroop task and why might this test be used to look at something like ADHD?
Incongruent stimuli are those in which ink colour and word differ. Congruent are those where the ink matches the word that is being read. The stroop effect show how automatic processes, like reading can interfere with controlled processes. It also highlights selective attention and the interference that can occur
400
You have been a passenger in the car being dropped off to your friends house for the last 7 years. You finally get your license and drive to your friends house with no GPS or trouble arriving at your destination. According to Tolman what is this called and how is it proof of latent learning?
What is a cognitive map. It shows that we have the ability to plan and map things out in our minds without actually practicing them. The reward of getting ourselves there safe and on our own help us perform the skill.
400
Witnesses who talk to each other after an event can blend their memories. One witness might suggest a detail that another person later recalls as their own observation, distorting both their original memories. This is known as...
Memory contamination
500
When we learn something new and store a memory of it, a relatively stable connection between neurons is formed. These connections or pathways will be strengthened or weakened based on their activity levels. Please describe each step of neural messaging
Dendrites receive a message from another neuron. The message travels through the soma. If the message is strong enough, it goes down the axon as an electrical signal. When it reaches the axon terminal, neurotransmitters are released. The neurotransmitters cross the synapse and pass the message to the next neuron.
Bonus Question: What does this neural messaging look like when taking a drug like cocaine?
500
What are the main strengths and limitations of Piaget's Cognitive theory? What other two theories do they align with that we have studied before and what do they all imply about cognitive development within the brain?
Answers will vary. Something along the lines of:
Helps to create developmental milestones, particularly useful for teachers, early childcare workers, child psychologists HOWEVER learning is not always thought to be so concrete and perhaps can occur more gradually. It also fails to discuss the role of social and emotional relationships in the child's like.
Erikson's Psychosocial and Freud's Psychosexual stages
Answers will vary
500
A woman dreams she is on a bus in California, travelling east, but knows she is going in the wrong direction and feels helpless. She gets off the bus, rents a car, and heads west. Use at least 2 of the three sleep theories to analyse this dream
Answers will vary but the three theories are Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory, Information Processing Theory and Activation-Synthesis Theory
500
Compare and contrast the two studies that both used rats to test their theories. Particularly the role of reinforcement
Answers will vary Tolman versus Skinner, schedules of reinforcement versus latent learning
500
Please discuss the two key findings in the two experimental conditions in the Loftus and Palmer Study
Experiment 1: Language influences recall (and can influence the way in which we recall information)
Experiment 2: Recall can be false (meaning we can recall things that never happened).