Methods & Approaches to Cog Psych
The name of the approach to studying the mind by thinking about one's own thoughts, sensations and perceptions
What is Introspection?
The part of a neuron that the action potential travels down from the soma to the terminal
What is an axon?
The term for when we use knowledge, context or expectations to help us perceive the world around us
What is top-down processing?
This is the term for when we miss events because our attention is focused elsewhere
What is inattentional blindness?
The human visual area known as the FFA responds selectively to this type of visual stimulus
What are faces?
What is behaviorism?
The name of the gap between the terminal of one neuron and the dendrite of another neuron
What is a synapse?
This is the term for when our percept does not match the distal stimulus
What is lack of correspondence?
This is when we are attending to something but not looking at the thing we are paying attention to
What is covert attention?
This is the term for the variable that is manipulated in an experiment
What is the independent variable?
A behavioral measure of response speed, starting from the presentation of a stimulus
What is reaction time?
The voltage in a neuron must reach this threshold in order for an action potential to fire
What is -55 mv?
The term for the phenomenon that things appear to have the same size, color and shape even though we see them over different distances, lighting conditions and viewpoints/angles
What is perceptual constancy?
In the brain imaging technique known as fMRI, the "f" stands for this
What is "functional"?
B.F. Skinner believed that all human behavior could be explained by positive and negative reinforcement, also known as this
What is operant conditioning?
The technique used to measure the electrical response of an individual neuron to different visual features
What is single-cell recording?
The dorsal stream of perception is associated with coding this type of information
What is spatial/location and/or action information?
This task was used to show that focused attention works like a moving spotlight
What is the Posner Cueing Task?
What is a computer?
Two lines in a line graph that are NOT parallel indicates a statistical effect known as this
What is an interaction?
The name of the phase of an action potential where the voltage dips below baseline and no new action potentials can be generated
What is the refractory period?
This is the name of the system that is responsible for representing actions of other people
What are mirror neurons?
This type of visual search is slow and serial because you have to locate an item by identifying multiple features that co-occur
What is conjunction search?
This is the anatomical name of the visual pathway that helps us identify "what" objects are
What is the ventral pathway?