Those of you who attend my Neuropsychology of Learning class at Fresno Pacific University in Bakersfield, you have a blogosphere holiday.  As for my Brandman University Cognitive Psychology students, let me ask you this:  Are you ready for the Cognitive Psychology final exam?  Think about yourself as an athlete in a curling event at the 2010 Winter Olympic games.  Tell yourself, "This may be a little slippery, but I rock!" and "Though this ice is cold, I will win the gold!" 



Pick it up, grab the rock and send it down towards the target.

1.  What are the following lyrics, from the song, All Fired Up, by yours truly, referring to?

at rest a neuron's charges
are negative within
and positive outside the cell
that's how it all begins
an AP is an action
potential that will change
when sodium is tossed about
and chemicals exchange...

a.  The Action Potential that proceeds neurotransmission
b.  The secretion of epigentic fluid following a spinal tap
c.  The natural outcome of Sperry's work on epileptic patients
d.  None of the above
e.  All of the above

2.  The movie, Secrets of the Mind, reveals Dr. V.S. Ramachandras discoveries that:

a.  the brain undergoes a massive "re-wiring" when a person loses a limb
b.  the corpus collosum is instrumental in mediating operations between the left and right hemisphere of the brain
c.  the power of the mind in the management of pain, and how to trick the mind into providing pain relief
d.  how seizures can lead to powerful spiritual experiences
e.  all of the above
f.  all of the above except b
g.  all of the above except d

3.  The mind is continuously involved in a 3-stage process involving input, integration and output.  When you learn a word that you had no previous knowledge of, a brand new neuropathway is established in the brain.  The following excercise will demonstrate the input-integration-output process.

Instructions: Find a way to seamlessly integrate the following low-frequency familiarity words, expanding the quote concerning the movie, The Village, (below) as you create a brand new set of sentences.  If these are already familiar ones to you, then seek out words that are not presently familiar to you and find a way to incorporate them into the paragraph.  Either substitute words in the sentences or add to existing sentences (or create new sentences using the new words), but make sure the new sentences blend with the existing sentences so an even flow is generated.   

fictive (FIK-tive) adjective:
ardent, intense, fervent

objurgate (OB-jer-GAYT) verb
denounce, upbraid harshly; revile

bifurcate (BI-fer-KAYT) verb
fork, divide into two branches

legerdermain (LEJ-er-de-MAYN) noun
1. slieght of hand, magic tricks.
2. sophistry; trickery
Related words: legerdemanianist

prescience (PRESH-ens) noun
1.  foreknowledge
2. foresight
Related words: prescient (adjective), presciently (adverb)

sanguine (SANG-gwin) adjective
1.  hopeful, optimistic
2.  confident
Related words: sanguinarily (adverb), sanguineariness (noun)

* Borrowed from Eugene Ehrlich's The Highly Selective Dictionary for the Extraordinarily Literate. 

Here are the sentences (paragraphs) you will rework, through incorporation of the new words:

In the movie, The Village, rather than relying on the neocortex, and the concomitant higher level processing to protect themselves from danger, the elders essentially regress, resorting to the lowest common denominator, fear, the type of fear that stems (no pun intended) from the more primitive areas of the brain, like the limbic system, involving the activation of the amygdala.  Those who venture out of the village are harshly upbraided, but there are two burgeoning outlooks concerning the way that villagers should approach the outside world, and these two views divide the traditional members of the village from the risk-takers, who are generally younger in age. 

The elders resort to slieight of hand in keeping the villagers under control and reinforcing fears they may have about outsiders.  But some have the mental foresight, and are confidently optimistic that the locus for hope for their wellbeing and, ultimately, their survival may actually involve the enviorns surrounding the boundaries of the village.   

4.  Page 118 (Spotlight Attention and Visual Search): Among the input attentional processes, visual attention, a process related to perceptual space, is different than the orienting response in the following way:

a.  In visual attention, movement of the eye and head are more jerky, not as smooth and flowing as they are in the orienting response

b.  in visual attention, there is "no necessary movement of the eyes or head
 
c.  the two types of input attentional processes are the same, so the question is a non sequitur.

d.  all of the above, and yet, in existential terms, oddly none of the above at the same time. 


5.  Page 119 (lower paragraph):

Spotlight attention is:

a.  Something that big stars like Lady Gaga to because it is in their nature as troglodytic cynosures

b.  a phenomenon that first captured the attention around the world when American Idol was in its first season

c.  the mental attention-focusing mechanism that prepares you to encode stimulus information


6.  (page 123) Conscious attention:

a.  is also called "controlled attention"

b.  prepares us to respond in a deliberate way to the environment

c.  is slower that spotlight attention

d.  operates in a more serial fashion than spotlight attention

e.  is especially influenced by conceptually driven processes

f.  none of the above

g.  all of the above, except h

h.  all of the above


7.  T or F quote (page 123):

"Spotlight attention...is a basic, rapid attentional mechanism that seems to operate in parallel across the visual field, in a highly automatic fashion."


8.  Harry Hemi, who drives a semi, actually owns a hemi, but it sits on his driveway most of the time.  This is not the only hemi Harry neglects.  You see, Harry suffers from a condition known as hemineglect.  This means that:

a.  he doesn't eat the types of foods generally considered nourishing for the brain's right and left hemisphere

b.  he experiences a marked disruption in his ability to refocus his attention to one side of his face or the other.

c.  he experiences a disruption or decreased ability to attend to something in the (often) left field of vision

d. all of the above

e.  b and c only


9.  (page 161)  In the recency effect:

a.  all items in a to-be-recalled list are perceived with exactly the same level of salience

b.  the late positions in a to-be-recalled list are sensitive to deliberate rehearsal that transforms information into long-term memory, whereas early positions tend to be recalled with high accuracy in the free recall task

c.  early positions in a to-be-recalled list are sensitive to deliberate rehearsal that transfers information into long-term memory, whereas later positions tend to be recalled with high accuracy in the free recall task

d.  all of the above


10a.  T or F:

Dr BLT's balloon-0-brain-ogram diagramming excercise, Part 1, is hypothesized to produce a more efficient memory for areas of the brain than simply diagraming the brain via pen and paper, because it likely creates a greater level of stimulation to the motor cortex of the brain, even as it profoundly engages both hemispheres of the brain. 

10b.  T or F:

Dr BLT's balloon-o-brain-ogram diagramming excercise, Part II, by engaging a creative-labeling scheme, is hypothesized to produce a more efficient memory for the functions of the brain than simply assigning the conventional name to each brain part/region because involves creative thought processes that involve meaningful associations between structure and corresponding function.


11.  T or F: When you were asked to write a piece of fiction that, through the process of storytelling, and character development, portrays a particular cognitive phenomenon because it is more creatively challenging than simply writing a scientific paper.

12.  Two of the greatest recent discoveries in Cognitive Psychology include:

a. the way that memory mimics attentional processes and the way that intentional processes mimic attention
b.  new studies that illustrate, in a dramatic way, neuroplacitity (the brain's ability to mend itself) and new studies in an exciting new category known as epigenetics, which suggest that human behavior may impact generations that follow
c.  episodic memory and semantic memory
d.  all of the above
e.  none of the above

13.  T or F: Conceptually-driven processing is also known as bottom-up processing.

14.  To or F: Proactive interference is interference or difficulty, especially during recall, because of some previous activity. 

15.  Figure out what an online comprehension task is, based on the context associated with the following sentence:

"What do you think this is, Selena, an online comprehension task?  We don't have the luxury of measuring performance while comprehension is taking place.  We'll draw those measurements later, when we can get to it."

Based on the context of the sentence, one can logically conclude that an online comprehension task:

a.  is one that is performed on a blog on the computer
b. a task in which measurements of performance are obtained as comprehension takes place
c. a task in which measurements of performance and recall are obtains after a period of time elapsing beyond the duration of the comprehension task itself
d. all of the above

16.  The question that you've just completed is an example of:

a. contextual cueing
b. contextual learning
c. contextual priming
d. all of the above

17.  T or F
A neurotransmitter is the chemical substance released into the synapses between two neurons, responsible for activating or inhibiting the next neuron in sequence

18.  T or F: Metamemory is knowledge about one's own memory system and it's functioning

19.  To or F: B. F. Skinner is generally credited with introspection, the method of investigation in which subjects look inward to describe their mental processes and thoughts. 

20.  MRI stands for:
a. memory response input
b. mega-recall instructions
c. magnetic resonance imaging, a medical scanning technology that reveals anantomical structure, especially of the brain

21.  In the movie, Charly, recognition-hungry researchers committed an ethical breach against Charly by...
a. forgetting to feed Algernon
b. failing to give Charly Gordon enough anesthetic prior to his operation
c. rushing ahead with the experiment before understanding possible complications, and in the process, failing to warn Charly that the collosally impressive results were not permanent, but temporary

22.  The future that Charly described to scientists in the room where he was displayed as a trophy, was...
a. a bright one
b. a pretty good one
c. a gloomy, Stygian, and dire one, marked by abject pessimism
d.  one marked by ostensible scientific progress at the expense of losing basic common sense and humaness
e. c and d
f. all of the above

23.  T or F: While a person may lose a limb, the brain continues to map, or represent the lost limb as if it still exists, contributing to the pheneomenon of phantom pain

24.  The two types of thinking most valued by your instructor are:
a. concentrated thinking and rote memorization
b.  concrete thinking, which is initiated in Piaget's concrete operational stage of development
c.  creative and critical thinking
d.  some of the above

25.  The use of skits and songs that seamlessly incorporate course material are used in Dr BLT classes for the purpose of:
a. giving students an opportunity to show off their skills in the studio
b. stimulating holistic learning that draws extensively from both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously
c. disabusing students of the notion that everything must have a purpose
d. casting down on traditional methods of learning