PSY 305 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Retrograde Amnesia, Iconic Memory, Echoic Memory
2 Jul 2018
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PSY 305 MIDTERM #2
Materials from exam 1: All exams are somewhat comprehensive!
1. Brain structures and associated function -midbrain, thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic
system, Occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes, primary processing areas -sensory
areas, motor area, association areas, specialized processing modules.
Thalamus- relay station for all controlling sensory information going to cortex
Hypothalamus- controlling motivated behaviors (ie: eating, drinking, sexual activity)
Limbic system- divided into 4 parts
Occipital: vision
Temporal: sound
Parietal: touch
Frontal lobe: organizing role in declarative memories/higher thinking
*selecting information to be encoded into long-term memory
*retrieve information back into working memory
Midbrain- coordinating movement, especially eye; relays auditory information from ears to
forebrain; helps regulate pain
Primary Processing Areas-
Sensory areas:
Motor area:
Association areas:
Specialized processing modules:
2.What is Hemispheric specialization/lateralization?How is the brain organized?
●the brain is divided into a left and a right half. Those halves are connected by a fibrous
band of tissue called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum serves as a pathway for
information from one half of the brain to the other.
●Organized in lobes
3.Which are the two main processing streams in visual perception? AVERIE
●Dorsal Stream: also known as the “where” pathway, helps us perceive where objects are
in space.
○Activation from the occipital lobe is passed along the where pathway to the
parietal cortex
●Ventral Stream: also known as the “what” pathway, helps us identify objects
○Some of the activation from the occipital lobe is passed along to the cortex of the
temporal lobe
4.What is the difference between top-down and bottom-up processing? Discuss how each
contributes to our perception of the world, or our memories?
●Top Down Processing
○Relies on your knowledge, “concept driven” and processes shaped by knowledge
○Context driven like reading the words “THE” and “CAT” pg 106
○For instance, you are presented with a paragraph written with difficult
handwriting. It is easier to understand what the writer wants to convey if you read
the whole paragraph rather than reading the words in separate terms. The brain
may be able to perceive and understand the gist of the paragraph due to the
context supplied by the surrounding words.
●Bottom Up Processing
○Processes that are directly shaped by the stimulus are sometimes called “data
driven”
○In the bottom-up processing approach, perception starts at the sensory input, the
stimulus. Thus, perception can be described as data-driven. For example, there is
a flower at the center of a person's field. The sight of the flower and all the
information about the stimulus are carried from the retina to the visual cortex in
the brain. The signal travels in one direction.
5.Role of context and experience.What is a heuristic? Why is it useful? Give one example of
when they fail in perception or in memory.
●Heuristic:is any approach to problem solving, learning, or discovery that employs a
practical method not guaranteed to be optimal or perfect, but sufficient for the immediate
goals.
●While heuristics can speed up our problem and decision-making process, they can
introduce errors. Just because something has worked in the past does not mean that it will
work again, and relying on an existing heuristic can make it difficult to see alternative
solutions or come up with new ideas. As you saw in the examples above, heuristics can
lead to inaccurate judgments about how common things occur and about how
representative certain things may be.
●Heuristics can also contribute to stereotypes and prejudice
●Ex:
Attention
6.Why is attention necessary? Give examples of how attention affects perception.
●The ability to focus on specific stimuli or locations. It is both limited and selective
●Ex: studies of inattentional blindness: video of people playing bball and gorilla walks
through them
○If you are paying attention to one thing, your perception of another thing can be
skewed
●Ex: images alternating with one feature in the image changing. Results showed that the
pictures had to alternate a # of times before the change was detected, but when a cue is
added to show there to attend, observers noticed change more quickly
○Need attention to perceive// notice changes
7.What is selective attention? How is it achieved?
●Selective Attention:
○Attending to one thing while ignoring others
●Some aspects of the environment are more important and interesting than others
●There is too much incoming stimulation at the retina to process everything–
●Selection is achieved partially through use of foveation
●Scanning a scene -eye movements can take in different parts of a scene
●•Saccades-small, rapid eye movements
●•Fixations-pauses in eye movements that indicate where a person is focusing/attending•
○Approximately 3 fixations per second Characteristics of the scene:
●Stimulus salience-areas of stimuli that attract attention due to their properties
○Color, contrast, and orientation are relevant properties
○Bottom-up process that is unrelated to meaning
●Picture meaning and observer knowledge
○Scene schema-prior knowledge about what is found in typical scenes
■Fixations are influenced by this knowledge
●Influence of the observer’s task
○Task demands override stimulus saliency
○Eye movements usually precede motor movements by fraction of a second
8.What is priming? Inattentional blindness? Change blindness? Attentional blink? Give
examples for each.
●Priming
○A process through which one input or cue prepares a person for an upcoming
input or cue
○Ex: focus your attention on the middle of the screen
●Inattentional Blindness
○A pattern in which perceivers seem literally not to see stimuli right in front of
their eyes; this pattern is caused by the participants’ attending to some other
stimulus and not expecting the target to appear.
Document Summary
Materials from exam 1: all exams are somewhat comprehensive: brain structures and associated function -midbrain, thalamus, hypothalamus, limbic system, occipital, temporal, parietal, and frontal lobes, primary processing areas -sensory areas, motor area, association areas, specialized processing modules. Thalamus- relay station for all controlling sensory information going to cortex. Hypothalamus- controlling motivated behaviors (ie: eating, drinking, sexual activity) Frontal lobe: organizing role in declarative memories/higher thinking. *selecting information to be encoded into long-term memory. Midbrain- coordinating movement, especially eye; relays auditory information from ears to forebrain; helps regulate pain. The brain is divided into a left and a right half. Those halves are connected by a fibrous band of tissue called the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum serves as a pathway for information from one half of the brain to the other. Dorsal stream: also known as the where pathway, helps us perceive where objects are in space.
