2nd Quiz of Psychology

Chapter5 Conscious
1. Define the term consciousness, and distinguish between waking consciousness and altered states of consciousness.
- Consciousness consists of all the sensations, perceptions, memories and feelings you are aware if at any instant.
- Waking consciousness is a state of clear, organized alertness. In waking consciousness, we perceive times places and events as real, meaningful, and familiar. But states of consciousness related to fatigue, delirium hypnosis, drugs, and euphoria may differ markedly from normal awareness. Altered state of consciousness is a condition of awareness distinctly different in quality or pattern from waking consciousness.
2. Understand circadian rhythms and biological rhythm.
- Biological rhythm is any repeating cycle of biological activity, such as sleep and waking cycles of changes in body temperature.
- Circadian rhythms is
3. Describe the sleep wake cycle and distinguish between the different stages of sleep.
-Daily sleep and waking periods create a variety of sleep patterns. Rhythms of sleep and waking are so steady that they continue for many days, even when clocks and light –dark cycles are removed. However, under such conditions, humans eventually shift to a sleep- waking cycle that averages slightly more than 24 hours.
-stage 1: As you enter light sleep, your heart rate slows even more. Breathing becomes more irregular. The muscles of your body relax. This may trigger a reflex muscle twitch called a hypnic jerk. In stage 1 sleep the EEG is made up mainly of small, irregular waves with some alpha.
-Stage 2: As sleep deepens, body temperature drops further. Also, the EEG begins to include sleep spindles, which are short bursts of distinctive brainwave activity. Spindles seem to mark the true boundary of sleep.
-Stage3: In stage 3, a new brainwave called delta begins to appear. Delta waves are very large and slow. They signal a move to deeper sleep and a further loss of consciousness.
- Stage 4: Most people reach deep sleep in about an hour. Stage 4 brainwaves are almost pure delta, and the sleeper is in a state of oblivion. If you make a loud noise during stage 4, the sleeper will wake up in a state of confusion and may not remember the noise, After spending some time in stage 4, the sleeper returns to stage 1 Further shifts between deeper and lighter sleep occur throughout the night.
4. Understand normal sleep needs and the effects of sleep deprivation.
- Sleep is an innate biological rhythm that can never be entirely ignored. The majority of us sleep on a familiar 7- to 8hour-per-night schedule. For few people, however, it is quite normal to sleep as little as 5 hours per night or as much as 11.
-Age and personality make big differences. Sleep loss typically causes trembling hands, drooping eyelids, inattention, irritability, staring, increased pain sensitivity, and general discomfort. It also can affect your mood, memory ability to pay attentions, and even your health.
5. Define insomnia and ways to deal with it.
- Insomnia includes difficulty in going to sleep, frequent nighttime awakenings, waking too early, or a combination of these problems.
- Sleep specialists prefer to treat insomnia with lifestyle changes and behavioral techniques. Treatment for chronic insomnia usually begins with a careful analysis of a patient’s sleep habit, lifestyle, stress levels, and medical problems. The following list is helpful for treating insomnia.
Stimulus control. – insisting on a regular schedule helps establish a firm body rhythm, greatly improving sleep.
Sleep restriction – restricting sleep to normal bedtime hours avoids fragmenting sleep rhythms.
Paradoxical intention – another helpful approach is to remove the pressures of trying to go to sleep.
Relaxation – some insomniacs lower their arousal before sleep by using a physical or mental strategy for relaxing, such as progressive muscle relaxation, meditation or blotting our worries with calm images.
Exercise – strenuous exercise during the day promotes sleep.
Food intake – Eating starchy foods increases the amount of tryptophan reaching the brain. More tryptophan, in turn, increases the amount of serotonin in the brain, which is associated with relaxation, a positive mood, and sleepiness (cookies, bread, pasta, oatmeal, pretzels, dry cereal, baked potato)
Stimulants- stimulants, such as coffee and cigarettes, should be avoided.
6. Distinguish REM from NREM sleep. What is REM rebound?
- The two most basic sleep states are rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM (NREM) sleep. REM sleep is strongly associated with dreaming. But, non-REM sleep is dream free about 90 percent of the time.
- REM rebound is the occurrence of extra rapid eye movement sleep following REM sleep deprivation.
7. Contrast the different theories of dreams in your book: Gestalt Freudian and the activation -synthesis hypothesis. What are lucid dreams?
- According to the Freudian view, dreams express unconscious wishes through dream symbols. But many theorists have questioned Freud’s view. For example, the activation-synthesis model portrays dreaming as a physiological process. Because the frontal loves of the brain are less active during sleep, dreams may be more revealing than waking thoughts.
- Lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer feels awake and capable of normal thought and action.
8. What is the main characteristic of hypnosis? What is the difference between a stage hypnotist and a hypnotherapist?
- Hypnosis is an altered state of consciousness characterized by narrowed attention and increased suggestibility.
9. Describe meditation and its’ effects.
- Meditation is a mental exercise for producing relaxation or heightened awareness. In general, meditation focuses attention and interrupts the typical flow of thoughts, worries, and analysis. People who use meditation to reduce stress often report less daily physical tension and anxiety.
- Effect: Major benefits of meditation are its ability to interrupt anxious thoughts and to elicit the relaxation response.
10. What is a psychoactive drug?
- Psychoactive drug is a substance capable of altering attention, judgment, memory, time sense, self-control, emotion, or perception.
11. What is drug tolerance, psychological and physical dependency?
- Drug tolerance is a reduction in the body’s response to a drug.
- Psychological dependency is based primarily on emotional or psychological needs.
- Physical dependency is physical addiction, as indicated by the presence of drug tolerance and withdrawal symptoms.
12. Distinguish between CNS stimulants, depressants and hallucinogens. Give example of each category.
-A stimulant is a substance that increases activity in the body and nervous system.
(Convulsions, Extreme nervousness, tremors, Strychnine, Amphetamines, Cocaine, Anxiety, palpitations, Feeling of well-being, euphoria Distortion of time and space, increased alertness, caffeine.)
-A depressant does the reverse.
(Anxiety relief, Feeling of well-being, euphoria loss of pain, Drowsiness, Sleep, Loss of consciousness, Convulsions, Anesthetics, Tranquilizers, Narcotics, Barbiturates, alcohol, Narcotics, Barbiturates, alcohol, Hypnotics)
-And Hallucinogen is a substance that alters or distorts sensory impressions.
(LSD, mescaline, marijuana)

13. Understand and describe the development of alcoholism.
- Being drinking is defined as downing five or more drinks in a short time. Being drinking is a serious sign of alcohol abuse. It may lead to up to 10 percent loss of brain power especially memory
- Moderate drinking is drink slowly, eat, limit drinking to first hour of event
- Treatment for alcohol abuse and dependence : detoxification, with drawls of the person from alcohol, occurs in a medical setting and is tightly controlled, often times necessary before long- term treatment begins




Chapter2 Perception
1. Define and contrast ‘sensation’ and ‘perception’.
- Sensation: a sensory impression; also the process of detection physical energies with the sensory organs.
- Perception : the mental proves of organizing sensations into meaningful patterns
o Native perception
§ A perceptual experience based on innate processes
o Empirical perception
§ A perception strongly influenced by prior experience
2. Describe the location and function of the following parts of the eye: lens, cornea, retina, rods, cones, and blind spot.
- Lens- structure in the eye that focuses light rays
- Cornea – Transparent membrane covering the front of the eye : bends light rays inward
- Retina – light- sensitive layer of cells in the back of the eye. Easily damaged from excessive exposure to light
- Cones – visual receptors for colors, fine details and bright light(daylight). Each eye has five million
- Rods – visual receptors for dim light, only produce black and white, total is 120 million
- Blind spot – area of the retina lacking visual receptors
3. Understand the processes of selective attention, sensory gating and sensory adaptation.
- Selective attention: Giving priority to a particular incoming sensory message. Voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input. Selective attention appears to be based on the ability of brain structures to select and divert incoming sensory messages.
- Sensory gating :
- Sensory adaptation: A decrease on sensory response to an unchanging stimulus.
4. What are perceptual constancies (size, shape and brightness) and what do they tell us about perception?
- Size constancy: the perceived size of an object remains the same, even though the size of its image on the retina changes.
- Shape constancy : the shape of an object remains stable, even though the shape of its retinal image changes
- Brightness constancy: the fact that the brightness of objects appears to stay the same as lighting conditions change. However, this holds true only if the blouse and other objects are all illuminated by the same amount of light.
5. What are the Gestalt principles of perceptual organization?
- Nearness –All other things being equal, stimuli that are near each other tend to be grouped together.
- Similarity – Stimuli that are similar in size, shape, color, or form tend to be grouped together.
- Continuation, or continuity – perceptions tend toward simplicity and continuity.
- Closure – Closure refers to the tendency to complete a figure, so that it has a consistent overall form.
- Contiguity – Contiguity is often responsible for the perception that one thing has caused another.
- Common region- stimuli that are found within a common area tend to be seen as a group.


6. Contrast monocular and binocular cues for depth perception and what do they tell us about the perceptual process?
- Binocular depth cues- perceptual features that impart information about distance and three dimensional apace which require two eyes
- Monocular depth cues – perceptual features that impart information about distance and three dimensional space which require just one eye
- Depth perception depends on binocular depth cues of retinal disparity and convergence, and also depends on the monocular depth cue of accommodation.

7. Explain how illusions, e.g. the moon illusion or Muller-Lyer illusion, explain perceptual habits of expectancies.
- Illusions: A misleading or distorted perception. In general, size and shape constancy, habitual eye movements, continuity and perceptual habits combine in various ways to produce the illusion.
- Muller-Lyer illusion – the horizontal line with arrowheads appears shorter than the line with V’s. Two equal-length lines tipped with inward or outward pointing V’s appear to be of different lengths.
- Moon illusion – perceiving the moon as larger when it is low in the sky. This occurs; because the moon’s apparent distance is greater when it is near the horizon than when it is overhead.
The moon illusion can be explained by the apparent distance hypothesis, which emphasizes that many depth cues are present when the moon is near the horizon, and few are present when it is overhead.
-Perceptual habits of expectancies: Like wise, past experience, motives, contest, or suggestions may create a perceptual expectancy that prepares you to perceive in a certain way.

Chapter3 Memory
1. Define memory in terms of information processing and distinguish among sensory memory, short term memory and long term memory.
- Memory: active system that stores, organizes, alters, and recovers (retrieves) information

- Sensory memory
o store an exact copy of incoming information for a few seconds or less
o the first stage of memory
o Iconic memory
· A fleeting mental image of visual representation
o Echoic memory
· After a sound a heard, a brief continuation of the sensory activity in the auditory system
- Short- term memory(STM)
o Temporarily holds small amounts of information briefly in consciousness
o Very sensitive to interruption of interference
o Working memory
· Part of STM; like a mental “scratchpad”
o Selective attention
· Focusing ( voluntarily) on a selected portion of sensory input (e.g., selective hearing)
· Phonetically
o Storing information by sound ; how most things are stored in STM
- Long –term memory(LTM)
o Stores information relatively permanently, unlimited capacity.
o Stored on basis of meaning and importance
2. Understand the role of attention, meaning, imagery and organization in the encoding process
- Attention – voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input
- Meaning
- Imagery
- Organization – organizing class notes and summarizing chapters can be quite helpful.
3. What is the capacity and time duration of information held in each stage of memory?

- Sensory memory holds information just long enough to move it to the second memory system, Short term memory. That is just for two seconds or less. Short term memory holds small amounts of information in conscious awareness for a dozen seconds or so. Long term memory can hold nearly limitless amounts of information.
4. Explain mnemonic devices and know examples.
- A mnemonic is any kind of memory system or aid.
- Mnemonic systems use mental images and unusual associations to link new information with familiar memories already stored in LTM
- Mnemonics greatly improve immediate memory. However, conventional learning tends to create the most lasting memories.
- The basic principles of mnemonics
o Use mental pictures
· Visual picture, or images, is generally easier to remember than words.
o Make things meaningful
· Transferring information from short- term memory to long- term memory is aided by making it meaningful.
o Make information familiar
· Connect it to what you already know. Another way to get information into long- term memory is to connect it to information already stored there.
o Form bizarre, unusual, or exaggerated metal associations.
· Forming images that make sense is better in most situations. However, when associating two ideas, terms, or especially mental images, you may find that the more outrageous and exaggerated the association.
o Keyword method
· Familiar word of image is used to link two other words or items
o Form a chain
· Remember lists in order, forming an exaggerated association connecting item one to two , and so on
o Take a mental walk
· Mentally walk along a familiar path, placing objects or ideas along the path
5. Understand state dependent learning
- When memory retrieval is influenced by body state
- If your body state is the same at the time of learning and the time of retrieval, retrievals will be improved
6. Understand interference theory; retroactive and proactive interference.
- Interference
o Tendency for new memories to impair retrieval of older memories and vice versa
o Retroactive interference
· Tendency for new memories to interfere with retrieval of old memories
o Proactive interference
· Old memories inhibit( interfere with) recall of new memories
7. Explain ways to remember better
- Knowledge of results
- Recitation
- Rehearsal
- Selection
- Organization
- Whole learning
- Part learning
- Progressive part learning – best suited to long and complex learning tasks.
- Serial position effect
- Over learning
- Spaced practice
- Massed practice
- Lack of sleep decrease retention
- Hunger decreases retention
- Cognitive Interview – helps people remember more by providing memory cues
8. Role of hippocampus in memory
- A hippocampus is a brain structure associated with information passing from short- term memory in to long-term memory
- If damaged, person can no longer ‘create’ long-term memories and thus will always live in the present
- Memories prior to damage will remain intact
Also associated with emotion