Phsyiological Psychology

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What is an Electroencephalography(EEG)?
A method for measuring the electrical activity in the brain by recording from electrodes placed on the scalp-or eyes. the patterns produced are known as EEG's.
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What is a characteristic of stage 1 sleep?
slow alpha waves, easy to wake
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What is a characteristic of stage 2 sleep?
larger EEG waves and sleep spindles (bursts of high frequency waves). Woken relatively easily.
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What is a characteristic of stage 3 sleep?
Delta waves (large + slow waves). Do not easily respond to external stimuli and are difficult to wake up.
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What is a characteristic of stage 4 sleep?
Delta waves of about 1 hertx, difficult to wake up apart from if a noise is personally significant to them.
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What is a characteristic of active sleep?
REM + desynchronised EEG pattern, dreams occur, lasts between 10-15 minutes
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What does restoration theory suggest? (D&K)
NREM sleep restores bodily processes that have deteriorated during the day and that REM sleeps stimulates protein synthesis which replenishes brain processes.
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What does evolutionary theorists suggest about sleep?
Sleep is a survival process.
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Give 3 PHYSIOLOGICAL reasons for dreaming.
- reoganisation of mental structures, crick and mitchinson suggest that dreaming is a way of sorting out all the information that you received over the day, Freud saw dreams as the 'royal road to the unconscious'
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what was D&K's first hypothesis?
there will be a significant association between REM sleep and dreaming
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what was D&K's second hypothesis?
there will be a significant positive coreelation between the estimate of dream duration of dreams and the length of eye movement.
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what was D&K's third hypothesis?
There will be a significant association between the pattern of eye movement and the context of the dream.
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Who were the participants in D&K?
7 men, 2 women. 5 subjects were studied intensely and 4 were studied in less depth as a control group.
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Where did the sleep sessions take place?
in a sleep lab- low ecological validity
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What extraneous variables were removed in D&K?
Participants were asked to eat normally but avoid caffiene and alcohol, they were asked to report to the sleep lab around their normal sleeping time.
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Where were the EEG electrodes placed in D&K?
on the skull and near the eyes
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Over how many nights did D&K study their participants?
61 nights.
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how many total awakenings did D&K make?
351.
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What was the average number of awakenings per night in D&K?
5.7
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How did D&K test hyp. 1?
At various times during the nightm participants were woken and asked to speak into a tape recorder near the bed reporting if they were dreaming and their dreams content. Different ppts were woken according to different schedules.
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How did D&K test hyp. 2?
The particiapnts were woken up either 5 or 15 minutes into and REM period and asked to estimate their dre
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How did D&K test hyp. 3?
The participants were asked the content of their dream when a particiular pattern of eye movement was recorded, either... mainly vertical, mainly horizontal, both vertical and horizontal, little or no eye movement.
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What were the results of hyp 1 in D&K?
REM sleep is predominantly, though not exclusively, associated with REM dreaming. Nearly all NREM dream recall was within 8 minutes of an REM, suggesting the dream had just been remembered.
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What were the results of hyp 2 in D&K?
All participants could choose the correct dream duration fairly accurately.
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What were the results of hyp 3 in D&K?
there was some relationship between the dream content and type of eye movement.
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What were some of the dreams associated with vertical eye movement in D&K?
watching someone climb up a series of ladders
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What were some of the dreams associated with horizontal eye movement in D&K?
watching people throwing tomatoes at each other
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What were some of the dreams associated with little/no eye movement in D&K?
Watching something in the distance or staring at a fixed point.
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What were some of the dreams associated with a mixture eye movement in D&K?
Standing in a group and having a conversation
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How were the results of hyp 3 in D&K tested?
20 naive ppts and 5 experimental ppts were asked to observe distant and close up activities whilst awake so that their eye movement could be recorded and compared.
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Evaluate the method of D&K?
Low in ecological validty so risk of demand characteristics, however it was very tightly controlled.
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Evaluate D&K's sample
Only 9 ppts and gender biased. However, there shouldn't be major differences between the brains of people so it is possible to generalise results.
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What is the role of the corpus callosum?
a bundle of nerve fibres that connect the two hemispheres, allowing information to be transferred between them.
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What is lateralisation of function?
the notion that the two hemispheres of the brain are responsible for different things.
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What is the left hemisphere responsible for?
controls the ability to speak, understand language and reason things out.
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What is the right hemisphere responsible for?
Specialises in tasks such as drawing, spatial awareness and initiative tasks.
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What is the temporal cortex responsible for?
Making memories.
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What was the aim of Sperry's study?
To investigate the function of seperated and independent hemispheres?
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Who were the participants in Sperry's study?
11 participants who all had hemisphere deconnection, this was major surgery used to treat people with epilepsy who experienced grand mal's
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What was the independent variable in Sperrys study?
whether the participant had hemisphere de-connection- quasi experiment.
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What were the materials used by Sperry?
Visual information was presented by projecting images on a screen in front of the subjects. Tactile information would be presented to either the left or right hand and participants had to say what the object was.
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Why did Sperry's subjects have to remain in silence during testing?
Hearing sends info to both sides of the brain and sperry required participants to only be using one side of their brain at a time.
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Why did Sperry only present images to participants for 1/10th of a second?
To prevent visual spread if the participants moved their eyes.
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Describe Sperry's test of one visual field?
Subjects covered one eye and were told to look t a fixation point on a screen. An image would then be flashed up for 1/10th of a second.
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Describe the results of Sperry's test of one visual field.
The participants could only recognise the image if it was shwon to the same visual fild again or given to the same side hand as was the visual field. Words could only be used to describe the image if it was presented to the right visual field.
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Describe the method that Sperry used to test both visual fields
subjects would look at a fixation point and images would be projected on either side of the fixation point, the subject would be asked to say/draw what that had just seen.
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Describe the results of Sperry's test of both visual fields
the subject would be able to say what they had seen in their right visual field but would be unaware that they had seen anything else, the right hand would ddraw what the right visual field saw and vice versa.
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Describe the method used by Sperry to test tactile abilities of one hand.
An object is placed in one hand. Participant is asked to say what the object is, identify it on a screen or pick it out from an array of objects.
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Describe the method used by Sperry to test tactile abilities of both hand.
the subject works with their hands out of sight and is given two different objects. The subject's asked to pick out the object from a pile and say what they have seen.
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Describe Sperry's results from the tactile investigations of one hand.
Could only name objects placed in the right hand. could only pick out object with the same hand that held it. Likewise, could only recognize with same eye as was held in.
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Describe Sperry's results from the tactile investigations of both hands
Each hand would search for object, independent of the other hand.
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What tests of the right hemisphere did Sperry conduct?
mental associatons, working logically or experiance seperate emotions to the left hemisphere by presenting images to the left eye or placing objects in the left hand.
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What were the results of the right hemisphere tests that sperry conducted on emotion?
When a nude was flashed up the particpant giggled but had no idea why- suggesting the right hemisphere has separate emotions/
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what were the results of the right hemispheres ability to solve simple mathematical problems?
The right hemisphere was able to do so
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Could the right hemisphere pick out semantically similar objects?
Yes, eg a wall clock with a toy wrist watch.
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Could the lext hand sort objects by shape, size and texture?
Yes.
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What conclusions did Sperry come to?
The left hemisphere is the dominant hemisphere as it contains the language centre. The two hemispheres work independantly of each other and are unaware if information received in the other hemisphere.
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What is the hippocampus?
A part of the brain located in the medial temporal lobe that makes up part of the limbic system. It is largely made up of grey matter. Humans have 2 hippocampi, their major function appears to be involvement in memory and spatial navigation.
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What was the aim of Maguires study?
To see if there were any physiological changes in the brains of humans who have extreme navigational experience or skills.
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What was the hypothesis of Maguires study?
Those who relied heavily on navigational skills would have different brains to those who didn't rely on navigational skills. The difference would be in the hippocampus. The assumption was that it had plasticity.
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Who were Maguires main participants?
16 male participants, licensed black cab drivers. All passed "the knowledge" in an avergae of 2 years. Right landed, aged 32-62, licensed for between 18months and 42 years. healthy medical, neurological and psychiatric backgrounds.
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Whoe were maguires control participants?
50 scan results from male, right handed, aged 32-62, similair mean age, healthy medical, neurological and psychiatric profiles, none of which were cab drivers.
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What was Maguires IV?
whether the participants were experiances or non-experianced cab drivers
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What was Maguires DV?
Size of hippocampi
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What confounding variables did Maguire elliminate?
Gender, primary hand, age, medical background.
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What method did maguire use?
A quasi experiment.
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What method of data collection did Maguire use?
MRI scans and Voxel based morphology which increased the validity of the study by backing each other up.
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What positive correlation did maguire find?
The longer someone had been a taxi driver, the larger their prosterior hippocampi.
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Which parts of the hippocampi were larger in the control group?
Prosterior + Body.
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Which parts of the hippocampi were smaller in the control group?
Anterior
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What is the believed explanation for Maguire's results?
the experiance of taxi drivers had an effect on size of hippocampi
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What is the rejected explanation for maguires results and why was it rejected?
Navigational abilities were innate so they were naturally good taxi drivers. This was rejected due to the positive correlation between size of prosterior hippocampi and duration of being a taxi driver.
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