Sensation and Perception

Psychophysics – absolute threshold, difference threshold (jnd)

Signal detection theory – hit, miss, false alarm, correct rejection

*sensory adaptation, sensory overload (selective attention)

Vision

Light – hue, brightness

Eye – cornea, iris, pupil, lens, retina

Rods and cones – differences, dark adaptation

Color vision – trichromatic, opponent process theory

*form perception

*figure/ground

*proximity, closure, similarity, continuity

Depth perception

*monocular cues – light and shadow, interposition, motion parallax, relative size, relative clarity, texture gradients, linear perspective

*constancy – shape, location, size, brightness, color

Binocular disparity

*hearing – loudness, pitch

*outer ear, eardrum, 3 bones, cochlea, organ of Corti, hair cells, basilar membrane

Taste – papillae, taste buds

Sweet, sour, salt, bitter

Factors influencing taste – smell, temperature, vision, past experience, other tastes, supertasters (genetic)

Smell – receptors

Effects of smell on people – person and gender recognition, reproductive

behavior, illness

*touch – pain (gate control theory)

*kinesthesis

*semicircular canals

*psychological and cultural influences – needs, beliefs, emotions, expectations

*subliminal perception vs. subliminal persuasion

*ESP

Learning

Classical conditioning

UCS (US), CS, UCR (UR), CR

Acquisition, extinction, spontaneous recovery, generalization, discrimination

Delayed, trace, simultaneous, backwards

Applying it – little Albert, conditioned taste aversion, *learning to like, medical treatments

Biological constraints

Operant conditioning

Primary and secondary reinforcers

Reinforcement – positive and negative

Punishment – positive and negative

*extinction, generalization, discrimination

Schedules of reinforcement – continuous, partial (intermittent)

Fixed ratio, variable ratio, fixed interval, variable interval

Shaping (*successive approximation), chaining, superstitious behavior

*behavior modification

*pros and cons of punishment (when it works and doesn’t)

*problems with rewards – extrinsic vs. intrinsic

Latent learning

Observational learning – vicarious learning, model

Attention, retention, reproduction, motivation

Memory

Encoding (audio, visual, semantic), storage, retrieval

Explicit memory – recall, recognition, relearning

Implicit memory – word stem, priming

Information processing model

Sensory memory – iconic, echoic

STM – encoding, 20 sec., 7+-2, chunking

LTM – schemas

Concepts, prototypes

*tip of the tongue

Level of processing theory – elaborative rehearsal (vs. *maintenance rehearsal)

*mnemonics

Procedural, episodic, semantic memory

Flashbulb memories – consequentiality, arousal, distinctiveness, narrative, errors made

Eyewitness testimony – emotional arousal, race, line-up, tired, misleading questions

Children and adults

*reconstructing the past – manufacturing of memory, source amnesia

*confabulation – 4 factors

Serial position effect – primacy and recency

Forgetting – decay, *replacement, and interference (proactive and retroactive)

Forgetting curve, overlearning, massed vs. distributed, active vs. passive, overlearning

Cue dependent – context and state

*biology of memory – long term potentiation, consolidation

*frontal lobes, prefrontal and temporal, hippocampus, cerebellum, cerebral cortex

*hormones

*repression controversy – psychogenic amnesia, repression

*autobiographical memories – childhood amnesia (why?), stories of our lives

*culture, central theme, reminiscence bump