Exam 2 Study Guide
Chapter 5 → States of Consciousness
● Manifest content: what we remember and report about a dream (storyline)
● Latent content: the actual, underlying wishes that a dream represents
● Dream theories
○ Unconscious wish fulfillment theory: dreams represent unconscious
wishes that dreamers desire to see fulfilled
○ Dreams for survival theory: dreams permit us to reconsider and reprocess
information that is critical to our daily survival during sleep
■ Based in the evolutionary perspective
■ Dreams represent concerns about our daily lives, illustrating our
uncertainties, indecisions, ideas, and desires
○ Activation synthesis theory: focuses on the random electrical energy that
the brain produces during REM sleep, possibly as a result of changes in the
production of certain neurotransmitters
■ Randomly stimulates memories stored in the brain
○ Reverse learning theory: dreams have no meaning at all and serve solely as
mental housekeeping to flush away unnecessary information that is
accumulated throughout the day
■ Unlearning of material that serves no purpose and could end up
being confusing
● Stages of sleep
○ Stage 1: stage of transition between wakefulness and sleep that only lasts
for a few minutes
■ Relatively rapid, low amplitude brain waves
○ Stage 2: slower, more regular wave pattern
■ Half of total sleep of people in their early 20s
■ Sleep spindles: sharply pointed, spiky waves that cause momentary
interruptions
■ Increasingly difficult to awaken a person as this stage progresses
, ○ Stage 3: deepest stage where brain waves become slower with higher peaks
and lower valleys in the wave pattern
■ People are least responsive to outside stimuli
○ REM sleep: when sleepers have cycled back to a shallower state of sleep
where heart rate increases and becomes irregular, rapid eye movement
occurs, blood pressure rises, and breathing rate increases
■ 20% of adults’ total sleeping time
■ Major muscles of the body appear to be paralyzed
■ Dreams are most likely to occur, and they’re most vivid and easily
remembered
● Major sleep disorders
○ Insomnia: difficulty sleeping
○ Sleep apnea: a condition where a person has difficulty breathing while
sleeping, which results in disturbed, fitful sleep and a significant loss of
REM sleep
○ Night terrors: sudden awakenings from nonREM sleep that are
accompanied by extreme fear, panic, and strong physiological arousal
○ Narcolepsy: uncontrollable sleeping that occurs for a short period while a
person is awake
● Change blindness: failure to notice distractions in the visual field
● Inattentional blindness: failure to see an obvious visual stimulus when your
attention is narrowly focused
Chapter 6 → Learning
● Classical conditioning: a type of learning where a neutral stimulus comes to elicit
a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about the
response.
○ Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that naturally brings about a
particular response without having been learned
○ Unconditioned response (UCR): a natural, innate response that occurs
automatically and needs no training
Chapter 5 → States of Consciousness
● Manifest content: what we remember and report about a dream (storyline)
● Latent content: the actual, underlying wishes that a dream represents
● Dream theories
○ Unconscious wish fulfillment theory: dreams represent unconscious
wishes that dreamers desire to see fulfilled
○ Dreams for survival theory: dreams permit us to reconsider and reprocess
information that is critical to our daily survival during sleep
■ Based in the evolutionary perspective
■ Dreams represent concerns about our daily lives, illustrating our
uncertainties, indecisions, ideas, and desires
○ Activation synthesis theory: focuses on the random electrical energy that
the brain produces during REM sleep, possibly as a result of changes in the
production of certain neurotransmitters
■ Randomly stimulates memories stored in the brain
○ Reverse learning theory: dreams have no meaning at all and serve solely as
mental housekeeping to flush away unnecessary information that is
accumulated throughout the day
■ Unlearning of material that serves no purpose and could end up
being confusing
● Stages of sleep
○ Stage 1: stage of transition between wakefulness and sleep that only lasts
for a few minutes
■ Relatively rapid, low amplitude brain waves
○ Stage 2: slower, more regular wave pattern
■ Half of total sleep of people in their early 20s
■ Sleep spindles: sharply pointed, spiky waves that cause momentary
interruptions
■ Increasingly difficult to awaken a person as this stage progresses
, ○ Stage 3: deepest stage where brain waves become slower with higher peaks
and lower valleys in the wave pattern
■ People are least responsive to outside stimuli
○ REM sleep: when sleepers have cycled back to a shallower state of sleep
where heart rate increases and becomes irregular, rapid eye movement
occurs, blood pressure rises, and breathing rate increases
■ 20% of adults’ total sleeping time
■ Major muscles of the body appear to be paralyzed
■ Dreams are most likely to occur, and they’re most vivid and easily
remembered
● Major sleep disorders
○ Insomnia: difficulty sleeping
○ Sleep apnea: a condition where a person has difficulty breathing while
sleeping, which results in disturbed, fitful sleep and a significant loss of
REM sleep
○ Night terrors: sudden awakenings from nonREM sleep that are
accompanied by extreme fear, panic, and strong physiological arousal
○ Narcolepsy: uncontrollable sleeping that occurs for a short period while a
person is awake
● Change blindness: failure to notice distractions in the visual field
● Inattentional blindness: failure to see an obvious visual stimulus when your
attention is narrowly focused
Chapter 6 → Learning
● Classical conditioning: a type of learning where a neutral stimulus comes to elicit
a response after being paired with a stimulus that naturally brings about the
response.
○ Unconditioned stimulus (UCS): a stimulus that naturally brings about a
particular response without having been learned
○ Unconditioned response (UCR): a natural, innate response that occurs
automatically and needs no training
