EXAM 2 EDHD320 Sensation process by which sensory receptor neurons detect information and transmit it to the brain Perception the interpretation of sensory input recognizing what you see understanding what is said to you knowing that the odor you have detected is a sizzling steak and so on affected by the individuals history of learning experiences Habituation process of learning to be bored humans lose interest in a stimulus if it is presented repeatedly Sense of smell sensory receptors for smell or olfaction are located in nasal passage Sense of smell works well at birth Newborns react vigorously to unpleasant smells and turn their heads away Olfactory cues detectable prenatally prefer own amniotic fluid rather than another Familiar smells can calm babies mother s breast milk or own amniotic fluid during painful procedures or when mother is absent All babies show preference for human milk over formula Breast fed babies can recognize mother by smell of breasts underarms within 1 2 weeks of birth Babies who are bottle fed cannot Mothers can identify newborns by smell and are less repulsed by their own baby s dirty diaper rather than another baby s Tinnitus most common outcome of noise exposure ringing sounds in one or both ears that can last for days weeks or indefinitely As many as 85 of concert attendees report experiencing tinnitus Hearing problems associated with short periods of exposure to loud sounds may be temporary but damage from regular exposure to these same sounds can accumulate over time leading to moderate or even severe hearing loss by adulthood 1 Dark Adaptation process in which the eyes adapt to darkness and become more sensitive to the low level of light available occurs more slowly in older individuals than younger ones older person driving at night may have special problems when turning onto a dark road from a lighted highway Schema cognitive structures organized patterns of action or thought that people construct to interpret their experiences like having a set of rules or procedures that structure our cognition infant s grasping actions and sucking responses are early behavioral schemes patterns of action used to adapt to different objects During their second year children develop symbolic schemes or concepts They use internal mental symbols such as images and words to represent or stand for aspects of experience such as when a young child sees a funny dance and carries away a mental model of how it was done Older children become able to manipulate symbols in their heads to help them solve problems adding two numbers in their head and not on paper Adaptation process of adjusting to the demands of environment Occurs through 2 complementary processes assimilation and accommodation Assimilation process by which we interpret new experiences in terms of existing schemes or cognitive structures if you already have a scheme that mentally represents your knowledge of dogs you may label a dog doggie Accommodation process of modifying existing schemes to better fit new experiences invent a new name for an animal if its bigger than the usual dog or ask what it is and revise your concept of 4 legged animals Object Permanence an important change during the sensorimotor period concerns the infant s understanding of the existence of objects According to Piaget newborns lack an understanding of object permanence This is the fundamental understanding that objects 2 continue to exist they are permanent when they are no longer visible or otherwise detectable to the senses up thru 4 8 mos It is out of sight out of mind infants will not search for a toy if it is covered with a cloth or screen by substage 4 8 12 mos they master that trick but still rely on perceptions and actions to know an object Imaginary Companions preoperational stage Some children invent imaginary companions Parents may be worried but it is normal Imaginative uses of the symbolic capacity are associated with advanced cognitive and social development as well as higher creativity and imagery Conservation the idea that certain properties of an object or substance do not change when its appearance is altered in some superficial way Piaget s conservation of liquid quantity task pour equal amts of water into 2 identical glasses get child to agree that she has the same amount of water Then as the child watches pour the liquid from 1 glass into another shorter wider glass Ask if the 2 containers have the same amount Children younger than 6 7 will usually say the taller glass has more They lack the understanding that the volume of liquid is conserved despite the change in shape it takes in different containers preschoole ris unable to engage in decentration the ability to focus on 2 or more dimensions of a problem at once Preoperational thinkers engage in centration the tendency to center attention on a single aspect of a problem reversibility the process of mentally undoing or reversing an action older children often display mastery of this by suggesting that the water be poured back into its original container to prove that it is still the same amount Young child shows irreversibility of thinking and may insist that the water would overflow if it were poured back Egocentrism Piaget believed preoperational stage involved egocentrism a tendency to view the world solely from one s own 3 perspective and to have difficulty recognizing other points of view drawing of mountains Seriation concrete operational children are capable of logical operation of seriation which enables them to arrange items mentally along a quantifiable dimension such as length or weight Information processing approach to learning emphasizes the basic mental processes involved in attention perception memory and decision making Short term vs Long term memory can hold a limited amt of information about 7 items or chunks of info for several seconds short term memory can hold onto a telephone number while you dial it Cognitive researchers distinguish between passive and active forms of STM and use the term working memory to refer to a scratch pad that temporarily stores info while actively operating on it to be remembered for any length of time info must be removed from STM LTM a relatively permanent store of info that represents what most people mean by memory steps of learning encoding consolidation storage retrieval retrieval can be accomplished in several ways Recognition memory question when constitution was ratified and you re given 4 multiple