Psych 258 Midterm 1

• mind create representations of the world so we act the environment to achieve goals
• structuralism is experience is determined by combining basic elements of the mind into a whole
• william james taught the first psychology course at harvard
• watson - behaviorism is idea behaviors are acquired through interaction with the environment
• skinner - operant conditioning is how behavior is strengthened by use of positive reinforcers or withdrawal of negative reinforcers
• skinner argued children learn language through operant conditioning
• chomsky argued language was developed from inborn biologial program in the mind
• paradigm is system of ideas that dominate science at a particular time
• kuhn - scientific revolutions is shift from one paradigm to another (paradigm shift)
• short term memory has limited capacity and hold info for a few seconds (unless repeating)
• long term memory has a high capacity and holds info for long time
• episodic memory is life events stored in long term memory
• semantic memory is fact or info thats stored in long term memory
• procedural memory is physical actions thats stored in long term memory and is not consciously recalled
• electrophysiology is measuring electrical responses of nervous system
• positron emission tomography (PET) lets is see what areas of the brain were active during cognitive activity
• functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a technique that measures the blood flow in the brain to see neural activity
• level of analysis is idea topic can be studied many ways, each with its own set of variables and concepts
• neuron doctrine is individual cell transmits signal in nervous system and cells are are continuous with other cells
• cell body is the center of neruon and keeps it alive
• dendrites branch out from the cell body and receive information from other neurons
• axons process of transmitting signals to other neurons
• synapse is gap at the end of the neuron axon and dendrites of another neuron
• resting potential is inside neuron has a charge -70mV at rest
• action potential (nerve impulse) occurs when neuron is stimulated and transmits down axon and charge increases to 40mV
• neurotransmitter is released when signal reaches synapse at the end of the axon
• rate of nerve firing is number of action potentials travelling down axon per second
• experience dependent plasticity is the structure of the brain changed by experiences
• temporal lobe processes auditory info and encodes memeories of sounds and speech
• sensory code is how neurons represent various environment characteristics
• specificity coding is specific neurons only responds to certain objects
• population coding is the representation of the object is by pattern of firing large group of neurons
• sparse coding is when an object is represented by firing a small group of neurons
• cerebral cortex serves many functions and is the wrinkled covering on the brain
• brocas area controls ability to understand to speak words
• brocas aphasia is a language disorder that affects the ability to produce speech (slow and no grammer)
• wernikes area controls the ability to understand meaning of words
• wernikes aphasia allows produced speech and grammatically correct sentences but cannot understand others speech
• prosopagnosia is an inability to recognize faces
• double dissociation is damage in brain loses function A while function B is present , then damage to another area makes function B gone, function A is present