Unit 4 Study Guide

States of Consciousness (30 questions)

Consciousness
● Your awareness of the outside world and yourself
● Your own mental processes, thoughts, feelings, and perceptions
● Selective, subjective, and unique to you--always changing and central to your
sense of self
● Enables analysis, comparisons, the interpretation of experiences, integration of
what you already know, what you perceive in the present, and what you
anticipate
● Can be altered by sleep, hypnosis, medication, drugs
● Alpha and Beta waves
● Levels of consciousness:
○ Preconscious- outside of consciousness but contains feelings and
memories that you can easily bring into conscious awareness. Eg when
asked what you ate for dinner last night, you can easily remember and tell
○ Nonconscious- devoted to processes completely inaccessible to
conscious awareness to. Eg bodily functions and lower level processing of
sensations, like blood flow and recognizing patterns
○ Unconscious/subconscious
■ For psychodynamic psychologists (psychoanalysts)- unacceptable
feelings, wishes, and thoughts not directly available to conscious
awareness
■ For cognitive psychologists- processes the information your not
aware of
■ Generally: operates whenever you feel pr act without being aware
of what’s influencing you, whether it’s from the current situation or
from your past
● Dual processing- processing information on conscious and unconscious levels at
the same time
● Unconsciousness (not to be confused with the conscious)- loss of
responsiveness to the environment resulting from disease, trauma, or
anesthesia
Sleep
● Why we need it
○ Growth (Babies / teens need more sleep & more Stage 4 Sleep than
other age groups)-- pituitary gland releases a growth hormone necessary
for muscle development during sleep (during slow wave sleep)
 ○ Build immunity- sleep deprivation can suppress immune cells that fight of
viral infections and cancer
○ Genetic influences- used to keep people safe during potentially dangerous
periods (evolutionary)
○ Memory Consolidation (during slow wave sleep)- maintaining plasticity of
neural connections essential for storing and retrieving memories (during
REM and NREM-2)
○ Healthy body weight- sleep deprivation increases ghrelin, a hunger
arousing hormone, and decreases leptin, its hunger-suppressing partner
○ Extra- Sleep deprivation causes fatigue and irritability and impairs
concentration and productivity, can lead to depression, joint pain, and
slowed performance with greater vulnerability to accidents, sleep helps
restore and repair damaged neurons, sleep promotes creative problem
solving during the day
● Circadian rhythm
○ “Biological clock” controlled by the hypothalamus, systematically regulates
changes in body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, blood sugar levels,
hormonal levels, and activity levels over the course of about a day.
○ Would be about 25 hours without environmental cues but is about 24
hours in typical environments with day and night.
○ Forebrain, reticular formation, and thalamus are involved in the changes of
wakefulness, arousal, and attention
○ Physiological changes are reflected in changes of energy level, mood,
performance, wakefulness, sleep
● Temperature changes (goes down as we prepare for sleep, rises as we wake)
○ Part of circadian rhythm
○ Temp rises as morning approaches
○ Temp peaks during the day
○ Temp dips for a time in early afternoon
○ Temp drops again in the evenings
● Sleep stages – 90 minute cycles
○ Relaxed but awake = alpha waves. Alert and awake= beta waves
○ Stage 1 = relaxation, feeling of falling – hypnagogic jerks (your body thinks
your falling and braces itself, you jerk up). Quick sleep state with gradual
loss of responsiveness to outside , drifting thoughts, and images (the
hypnagogic state- semi-wakeful state of dreamlike awareness). Theta
waves (higher in amplitude, lower in frequency then alpha waves)
 ○ Stage 2 = About 50% of sleep time. 20 minutes of 90 minute cycle. High
frequency sleep spindles- bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain activity- and
K-complexes.
○ Stage 3 = beginning of deep sleep. 30 minutes of 90 minute cycle. Large,
slow delta waves and lack of muscle activity. Slowed heart rate and
respiration, lowered temperature and lowered blood flow to the brain.
Growth hormone is secreted. Where sleepwalking, sleep talking, wetting
the bed, and night terrors would occur.
○ REM = 80% dreaming, 5 to 6 times a night. About 20% of sleep time.
Called paradoxical sleep because EEGs show beta activity of wakefulness
and theta activity of stage 1, but we are in a deep sleep and are skeletal
muscles are paralyzed.
○ During a normal night’s sleep, stage 3 shortens and REM and stage 2
lengthens
● REM rebound (theories for why we need REM)- consistent sleep deprivation
causes a skip of stages 1-3 and an immediate sink into REM sleep, which
showcases the importance of REM sleep.
● Sleep disorders
○ sleep apnea- temporary cessations of breathing that awaken the suffere
repeatedly throughout the night
○ Insomnia- inability to fall/stay asleep
○ Narcolepsy- sudden and uncontrollable lapse into sleep (usually REM)
Dreams
● Dreaming theories
○ wish fulfillment- freudian psychodynamic- dreams are a safety valve for
unconscious desires
■ Manifest content- the remembered storyline of a dream
■ Latent content- the underlying meaning of a dream
○ information processing- dreams may help sift, sort, and fix the day’s
experience in out memory
○ physiological function- provides the sleeping brain with periodic
stimulation. Stimulation preserves and expands the brain’s neural
pathways and is important for development.
○ activation synthesis- during REM sleep, the pons generates bursts of
action potentials to the forebrain- activation- the dreamer tries to make
sense of the stimulation by creating a storyline- synthesis
○ cognitive processing- Only world our constantly active sleeping brain can
model is our stored memories, recent concerns, current emotions, and
expectations, which can be activated by electrical impulses. Dreams are
 the interplay of the physiological triggering of brain waves and the
psychological functioning of the imaginative, interpretive parts of the brain
● Night terrors (stage 3) vs. Nightmares (REM)- Night terrors are unremembered
periods of high anxiety that occurs in stage 3, while nightmares are frightening
dreams that occur during REM 3
Hypnosis
● Power of suggestion
○ the subject responds to the hypnotist’s suggestion that certain
perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviours will spontaneously occur.
○ Posthypnotic suggestion- a suggestion that a hypnotized person act a
certain way after he/she is brought out of hypnosis; used by some
clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors
● Recovered memories = fact & fiction
○ Does not enhance recall of forgotten memories, may evoke false
memories affected by the suggestions of the hypnosis
● Effectiveness for pain relief
○ Can help relieve pain with posthypnotic suggestion. Not very effective in
treating addiction.
● Dissociation / Divided Consciousness Theory- hypnosis causes us to divide our
consciousness voluntarily. One part or level of our consciousness responds to
the suggestions of the hypnotist; another part or level retains awareness of
reality.
○ Hidden observer- presence of a level of consciousness that monitors what
is happening while another level obeys the hypnotist’s suggestions.
● Social phenomenon / Social influence theory- hypnosis is not an alternate state
of consciousness, but a social phenomenon in which people act out the role of a
hypnotized person because that’s what’s expected of them. Not consciously
faking it-- the subjects feel and behave in the way a “good hypnotic subject”
would, like actors caught up in their roles. Only follow suggestions if they feel the
experiment is still underway, and stop when the experimenter eliminates their
motivator for being hypnotized by saying hypnosis reveals gullibility. The more
they like and trust the hypnosis, the more they allow that person to control their
attention and fantasies. An authoritative person in legitimate context can induce
people- hypnotized or not- to perform some unlikely acts. Backed up by the fact
that some people are more easily hypnotized than others (hypnotic suggestibility)
and people with high hypnotic suggestibility tend to have richer fantasy lives,
follow directions well, and be able to focus intensely on a single task for a period
of time.
 ● Post hypnotic suggestion- a suggestion that a hypnotized person act a certain
way after he/she is brought out of hypnosis; used by some clinicians to help
control undesired symptoms and behaviors
Drugs
● Psychological & physical dependence (withdrawal / tolerance)
○ Psychological dependence- person has intense desire to achieve the
drugged state despite known adverse consequences
○ Physical dependence- the drugs may produce tolerance-require larger
doses to achieve the desired effect- and withdrawal- significant discomfort
accompanying efforts to quit.
● Role of genetics in drug addiction
○ Some people are more genetically predisposed to addiction
● Types of psychoactive drugs
○ Depressants- reduce activity of CNS and induce sleep
○ Narcotics- depress the CNS, relieve pain, induce feelings of Euphoria
○ Stimulants- activate motivational centers, reduce activity in inhibitory
centers of the CNS
○ Hallucinogens- distort perceptions and evoke sensory images in the
absence of sensory input
● Classification and Effects of: alcohol, cocaine, heroin, caffeine, amphetamines,
marijuana, barbiturates, nicotine, LSD
 ○
○ LSD- hallucinogen, near death experience effects
REVIEW (20 questions)
UNIT 1 REVIEW
https://quizlet.com/49637290/types-of-brain-scans-ap-psych-unit-3b-flash-cards/
● Major perspectives –behavioral, cognitive, psychodynamic
○
● Research Methods : correlation, case study, naturalistic observation, survey,
random sample, random assignment, operational definitions
UNIT 2 REVIEW
● The structure of the neuron
● Brain Structures – location & function: hypothalamus, cerebral cortex, Broca’s,
Wernicke’s, association areas, hippocampus, cerebellum, pituitary gland,
reticular formation, corpus callosum
 ● Lobes of the Brain & Cortexes
● Dopamine and Parkinsons
● Dopamine and schizophrenia
● Split brain studies
● Agonist / Antagonist
● Divisions of the nervous system: CNS vs. PNS; Autonomic vs. Somatic;
Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic
UNIT 3 REVIEW
● Absolute Threshold
 ● Difference Threshold
● Weber’s Law
● Gestalt- an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.
The pacman triangle
Depth Perception
● visual cliff experiment
● binocular cues (retinal disparity)
● monocular depth cues (interposition, linear perspective, relative size, relative
height)
Light Waves & Sound Waves
 ● Amplitude
● Wavelength
Color Vision
● Opponent-Process Theory
Anatomy of Eye (You should be able to identify the location and explain the function of
each structure):
● Iris
● Retina (rods & cones – bipolar cells – ganglion cells)
● Optic Nerve (& blind spot)
Anatomy of Ear (You should be able to identify the location and explain the function of
each structure):
● Pinna - Auditory Canal – Eardrum - Malleus (hammer), Incus (anvil), Stapes
(stirrup) - Semicircular Canals – Cochlea -Basilar Membrane - Auditory Nerve