States of Consciousness

• Sleep: a state of consciousness. We are less aware of our surroundings.
• Conscious, subconscious, unconscious
• Biological Rhythms
• Annual Cycles: seasonal variations (bears hibernation, seasonal affective disorder)
• 28 day cycles: menstrual cycle
• 24 hour cycle: our circadian rhythm
• 90 minute cycle: sleep cycle
• Circadian Rhythm: our 24 hour biological clock. Our body temperature and awareness changes throughout the day.
• Sleep Stages: there are 5 identified stages of sleep. It takes about 90-100 minutes to pass through the 5 stages. The brain's waves will change according to the sleep stage you are in. The first four stages are known as NREM sleep. The fifth stage is called REM sleep.
• Stage 1: kind of awake and kind of asleep. Only lasts a few minutes, and you usually only experience it once a night. Your brain produces Theta waves (high amplitude, low frequency (slow))
• Stage 2: "baseline" of sleep. Part of the 90 minute cycle and occupies approximately 45-60% of sleep. More Theta waves that get progressively slower. Show sleep spindles... short bursts of rapid brain waves.
• Stage 3 & 4: slow wave sleep. Produce Delta waves. If awoken you will be very groggy. Vital for restoring body's growth hormones and good overall health. May last 15-30 minutes. "Slow wave" sleep because brain activity slows down dramatically from the "theta" rhythm of Stage 2 to a much slower rhythm called "delta" and the height. Delta sleep is the "deepest" stage of sleep and the most restorative. Brain craves delta sleep first and foremost.
• REM Sleep: Rapid Eye Movement. Brain is very active. Dram usually occur in REM. Body is essentially paralyzed.
• Stage 5: composes 20-25% of a normal night sleep. Breathing, heart rate and brain wave activity quicken. Vivid dreams can occur. From REM, you go back to Stage 2.
• Sleep Disorders
• Insomnia: recurring problems in falling or staying asleep.
• Narcolepsy: characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks. Lapses directly into REM sleep (usually during times of stress or joy).
• Sleep Apnea: a sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and consequent momentary reawakening.
• Night Terrors: a sleep disorder characterized by high arousal and an appearance of being terrified. Occur in Stage 4, not REM, and are not often remembered.
• Sleepwalking (Somnambulism): sleep walking most often occurs during deep non-REM sleep (stage 3 or 4 sleep) early in the night.
• Dreams: a sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person's mind.
• Manifest Content: the remembered storyline of a dream.
• Latent Content: the underlying meaning of a dream.
• Why do we Dream? Three Theories
• Freud's Wish-Fulfilling Theory: dreams are the key to understanding our inner conflicts. Ideas and thoughts that are hidden in our unconsciousness.
• Information-Processing Theory: dreams act to sort out and understand the memories that you experience.
• Physiological Function Theories
  Activation-Synthesis Theory: during the night our brainstem releases random neural activity, dreams may be a way to make sense of that activity.

Learning

• Associative Learning: learning that certain events occur together. Initial stage of learning.
• Main Types of Learning:
• Classical Conditioning: it all started with Ivan Pavlov
• Operant Conditioning
• Observational learning
• Latent learning
• Abstract learning
• Insight learning
• Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response.
• Unconditioned Response (UCR): the unlearned, naturally occurring response to the UCS.
• Conditioned Stimulus (CS): an originally irrelevant stimulus that, after association with the UCS, comes to trigger a response.
• Conditioned Response (CR): the learned response to a previously neutral stimulus.

• Classical Conditioning
• Acquisition: the phase where the neutral stimulus is associated with the USC so that the neutral stimulus comes to elicit the CR (thus becoming the CS).
• Extinction: the diminishing of a CR. Will eventually happen when the UCS does not follow the CS.
• Spontaneous Recovery: the reappearance. After a rest period, of an extinguished conditioned response.
• Generalization: the tendency, once a response has been conditioned, for stimuli similar to the CS to elicit similar responses.
• Discrimination: the learning ability to distinguish between a CS and other stimuli that does not signal UCS.
• Operant Conditioning: a type of learning which behavior is strengthened if followed by reinforcement or diminished if followed by punishment.
• Classical v. Operant
• They both use acquisition, discrimination, SR, generalization, and extinction.
• Classical Conditioning is automatic. Dogs automatically salivate over near, then bell-no thinking involve.
• Operant Conditioning involves behavior where one can influence their environment with behaviors which has consequences.
• Edward Thorndike
• Law of Effect: rewarded behavior is likely to recur.
• Shaping: a procedure in Operant Conditioning in which reinforcers guide behavior closer and closer towards a goal.
• Reinforcer: any event that STRENGTHENS the behavior it follows. Positive and Negative.
• Positive: Strengthens a response by presenting a stimulus after a response.
• Negative: Strengthens a response by reducing or removing an aversive stimulus.
• Primary Reinforcer: an innately reinforcing stimulus.
• Conditioned (Secondary) Reinforcer: a stimulus that gains it reinforcing power through its association with a primary reinforcer.
• Continuous Reinforcement: reinforcing the desired response ever time it occurs.
• Partial Reinforcement: reinforcing a response only part of the time. The acquisition process is slower. Greater resistance to extinction.
• Fixed-ratio Schedule: a schedule that reinforces a response only after a specified number of responses.
• Variable-ratio Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response after an unpredictable number of responses.
• Fixed-interval Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response only after a specific time has elapsed.
• Variable-interval Schedule: a schedule of reinforcement that reinforces a response at unpredictable time intervals.
• Punishment: meant to decrease a behavior
• Positive: addition of something unpleasant.
• Negative: removal of something pleasant.
• Token Economy: every time a desired behavior is performed, a token is given.
• Observational Learning: we learn through modeling behavior from others.
  Observational Learning + Operant Conditioning = Social Learning Theory
• Latent Learning: sometimes learning is not immediately evident.
• Insight Learning: some animals lear through the "ah ha" experience.

Memory

The persistence of learning over time through the storage and retrival of information.

• The Memory Process
• Encoding: the processing information into the memory system.
• Storage: the retention of encoded material over time.
• Retrieval: the process of getting the information out of memory storage.
• Recall vs. Recognition
• Recall: retrieve information from your memory.
• Recognition: identify the target from possible target.
• Flashbulb Memory: a clear moment of an emotionally significant moment of event.
• Types of Memory
• Sensory Memory: the incited requiring of sensory information in the memory system. Stored just for an instant and gets process the last half of second of visual. It last 2-4 seconds of auditory then the capacity of story is large and if energy is transferred, information is lost.
• Short-term Memory: memory that holds a few items briefly seven digits (plus or minus two).
  Working Memory: audio and visual both control where your attention lies.
• Long-term Memory: a permanent and limitless storage house.
  Encoding: getting information in our information.
  

• Two Ways to Encode Information
• Automatic Processing: unconscious encoding of incidental information.
• Effortful Processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort.
• Things to remember about Encoding:
1. The Next-in-Line Effect: we seldom remember what there person has just said or sone if we are nest.
2. Information minutes before sleep is seldom remembered; in the hour before sleep; well-remembered.
3. Taped if played while asleep is registered by ears, but we do not remember it.
• Spacing Effect: we encode better when we study or practice over time.
• Serial Positioning Effect: our tendency to recall best the last and first items in a list.
• Types of Encoding:
• Semantic Encoding: the encoding of meaning, like the meaning of words.
• Acoustic Encoding: the enforcing of sound, especially the sounds of words.
• Visual Encoding: the encoding of picture images.
• Self-Referent Effect: the idea that we remember things (like adjectives) when they are used to describe ourselves.
• Tricks to Encode
• Imagery: mental pictures
• Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units. Often it will occur automatically.

Storage

• Iconic Memory: a mementary sensory memory of visual stimuli, a photograph like quality lasting only about a second. We also have an echoic memory for auditory stimuli.
• Storing Memories
  Long Term-Potentiation: long-lasting enhancement in signal transmission between two neurons that results from stimulating them synchronously.
• The Hippocampus: damage to the hippocampus disrupts our memory.
  Left=Verbal
  Right=Visual and Location
• Types of Retrieval Failure
• Proactive Interference: the disruptive effect of prior learning on the recall of new information.
• Retroactive Interference: the disruptive effect of new learning on the recall of old information.

Intelligence

The ability to learn from experience, solve problems, and use knowledge to adapt to new situations.

• Factor Analysis: a statistical procedure that identifies clusters or related items on a test.
• Charles Spearman used FA to discover his g or (general intelligence).
• Multiple Intelligence: Howard Gardner disagree with Spearman's g and came up with the concept of multiple intelligence. He came up with the idea by studying savants(a condition where a person has limited mental ability but is exceptional in one area).
• Gardner's Multiple Intelligence:
• Visual/Spatial
• Verbal/Linguistic
• Logical/Mathematical
• Bodily/Kinesthetic
• Musical/Rhythmic
• Interpersonal
• Intrapersonal
• Natural
• Sternberg's Three Aspects of Intelligence:
• Analytical (academic problem solving)
• Creative (generating novel ideas)
• Practical (required for everyday tasks where multiple solutions exist)
• Emotional Intelligence: the ability to perceive, express, understand and regulate emotions.
• Brain Function and Intelligence: higher performing brains use less active that lower performing brains (use less glucose). Neurological speed is also a bit quicker.
• Mental Age: what a person of a particular age should know.
• Problems with the IQ formula: it doesn't work well with adults.
• Modern Tests of Mental Abilities: Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale(WAIS) consists of 11 subjects and cues us in strengths by using factor analysis.
• Aptitude v. Achievement Tests
• Aptitude: a test designed to predict a person's future performance. The ability for that person to learn.
• Achievement: a test designed to assess what a person has learned.
• Standardization: the test must be pre-tested to a representative sample of people.
• Flynn Effect: intelligence test performance has been rising.
• Reliability: the extent which a test yields consistent results over time.
• Validity: the extent to which a test measures what is suppose to be measure.
• Content Validity: does the test sample a behavior of interest.
• Predictive Validity: does the test predict future behavior.
• Does Intelligence Change Over Time?
  By age 3, a child's IQ can predict adolescent IQ scores. Depends on the type of intelligence, crystallized of fluid.

Unit 6

Language: our spoken, written or gestured words and the way we combine them to communicate.

• Phonemes: in a spoken language, the smallest distinctive sound unit.
• Morphemes: in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning. Can be a word or part of a word(prefix or suffix).
• Grammar: system of rules in a language that enables us to communicate and understand others.
• Semantics: the set of rules by which we derive meaning in a language. Adding -ed at the end of words meaning past tense.
• Syntax: the rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentence.
• Language Development
• Balling Stage (3-4 months): the infant make spontaneous sounds.
• One-word Stage (1-2 years): uses one word to communicate big meanings.
• Two-word Stage (2 years): uses two words to communicate meanings-called telegraphic speech.
• Skinner: though that we can explain language development through social learning theory.
• Psychologist
• Chomsky: we acquire language too quickly for it to be learned. We have this "learning box" inside our heads that enable us to learn any human language.
• Whorf's Linguistic Relativity: the idea that language determines the way we think.

Thinking

• Cognition: another term for thinking, knowing, and remembering.
• Concepts: a mental grouping of similar objects, events, dead, or people.
• Prototypes: a mental image or best example of a category.
• Algorithms: a methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem.
• Heuristics: a rule-of-thumb strategy that often allows us to make judgements and sole problems efficiently. 
• Insight: a sudden and often novel realization of the solution to a problem.
• Confirmation Bias: a tendency to search for information that confirms one's preconceptions.
• Match Problem
• Fixation: the inability to see a problem from a new perspective.
• Mental Set: a tendency to approach a problem in a particular way, especially if it has worked in the past.
• Functional Fixedness: the tendency to think of things only in terms of their usual functions.

Types of Heuristics (That often lead to errors)

• Representativeness Heuristic: a rule of thumb for judging the likelihood of things in terms of how well they match our prototype.
• Availability Heuristic: estimating the likelihood of events based on their availability in our memory.
• Overconfidence: the tendency to be more confident that correct.
• Framing: the way an issued is posed.
• Belief Bias: the tendency for one's preexisting beliefs to distort logical reasoning.
• Belief Perseverance: clinging to your initial conceptions after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited.
• Artificial Intelligence

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

• Visual Capture: the tendency for vision to dominate the other senses.
• Gestalt Psychology: Gestalt means "an organized whole." These psychologists emphasize our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
• Gestalt Philosophy: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
• Figure-Ground Relationship: the organization of the visual field into objects(figures) that stands out from their surroundings(ground).
• Grouping: the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into groups that we understand.
• Proximity: where we group similar figures together.
• Similarity: we group similar figures together.
• Continuity: we group continuous patterns together.
• Connectedness: we group together uniform and linked figures.
• Depth Perception: the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two dimensional.
• How do we transform 2D objects to 3D perception?
• Binocular Cues: depth cues that depends on two eyes.
• Retinal Disparity: a binocular cue for seeing depth. The closer an object comes to you the greater the disparity in between the two.
• Monocular Cues: depth cues that depends on two eyes.
• Interposition: if someone is blocking our view, we perceive it as closer.
• Relative Size: if we know that two objects are similar in size, the one that looks smaller is farthest away.
• Relative Clarity: we assume hazy objects are farther away.
• Texture Gradient: the coarser it looks the closer it is.
• Relative Height: things higher in our field of vision, they look farther away.
• Relative Motion: things that are closer appear to move more quickly. Linear Perspective: parallel lines seem to converge with distance.
• Light and Shadow: dimmer objects appear farther away because they reflect less light.
• Phi Phenomenon: an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession.
• Perceptual Consistency: perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images changes.

Smell, Taste, and Touch

• Tongue
• Papillae: those bums on our tongue. Help grip food while your teeth are chewing. Contain taste buds.
  
• Sweet is located on the tip of your tongue and it is sensed when our tastebuds come into contact with sugar.
• Salty is sensed when salty sensitive tastebuds come into contact with salt. It is located on the front side of the tongue.
• Sour is sensed when our tastebuds comes into contact with acid. Located on the back side of the tongue.
• Bitter is sensed when our tastebuds come in contact with an alkali metal. Located on the base of the tongue.
• Spicy is sensed when the no receptors in our mouth come into contact with a chemical that irritate it.
• Smell
• Pheromones: chemical messengers that are picked up through our sense of smell.
• Touch: receptors are located in our skin.
• Gate Control Theory of Pain: the nervous system blocks or allows pain signals to pass to the brain.
• Vestibular Sense: tells us where our body is oriented in space. Our sense of balance. Located in our semicircular canals in our ears.
• Kinesthetic Sense: tells us where are body parts are. Receptors located in our muscles and joints.