1 Intro Flashcards
What is sensation?
ensation is the starting point of interaction with the environment, involving the reception of information through our senses.
Q: What are sensory receptor cells?
A: Sensory receptor cells are specialized neurons sensitive to specific physical properties of stimuli, converting external stimuli into neural signals.
Q: What is perception?
A: Perception is the endpoint of the sensory process and represents the experience of the world as interpreted by the brain.
Q: Why is perception fundamental to our interaction with the environment?
A: It influences how we respond to stimuli, navigate our environment, and engage in everyday activities.
Q: How is perception critical for survival?
A: Accurate perception helps organisms detect danger, find food, and navigate complex environments.
Q: What is the starting point for all psychological processes?
A: Perception is the starting point for cognition, social interaction, mental health, and developmental/educational processes.
What are some practical apps of studying perception?
changes in ageing, disease, injury. Demands of driving, interacting w/ tech. Design of artificial perceptual systems.
Q: What is the perceptual process?
A: The perceptual process is a sequence that all perceptual systems follow, from detecting a stimulus to recognizing and acting on it.
Q: What is a distal stimulus?
A: A distal stimulus is a physical object in the environment that is the source of sensory information.
Q: What is a proximal stimulus?
A: A proximal stimulus is the information about the distal stimulus received by sensory receptor cells, representing the distal stimulus.
Q: How do different senses receive information about distal stimuli?
A: Each sense requires information about the distal stimulus through a different type of environmental physical energy (e.g., light for vision, sound waves for audition).
Q: What are receptor processes?
A: Receptor processes involve sensory receptor cells carrying out transduction, transforming environmental physical energy into electrical energy in the nervous system.
Q: What is transduction in the context of perception?
A: Transduction is the process by which sensory receptor cells convert environmental physical energy into electrical signals in the nervous system.
Q: Give examples of transduction in vision and audition.
A: In vision, receptors in the retina transform light into electrical signals; in audition, receptors transform sound waves into electrical signals.
Q: What is neural processing?
A: Neural processing is the transmission and interaction of electrical signals from one neuron to the next, modifying the signal as neurons interact.
Q: What are the stages of perception after neural processing?
A: The stages are perception (conscious sensory experience), recognition (placing objects in categories), and action (movement).
Q: What is visual form agnosia?
A: Visual form agnosia is a disorder characterized by the inability to recognize objects, highlighting the distinction between recognition and perception.
Q: How does existing knowledge affect perception?
A: Existing knowledge, assumptions, and memories can influence perception, recognition, and action, known as top-down processing.
Q: What is top-down processing?
A: Top-down processing is when perception is influenced by prior knowledge, assumptions, and expectations.
Q: What is bottom-up processing?
A: Bottom-up processing is when perception is based solely on incoming sensory information from the environment.
Q: Why is top-down processing important?
A: Top-down processing is important to simplify the complex perceptual process by using prior knowledge to make sense of sensory information.
Q: How do top-down and bottom-up processing interact in perception?
A: Perception involves both top-down and bottom-up processing, combining incoming sensory data with existing knowledge to form a complete understanding.
Q: What are the two main approaches to studying perception?
A: The two main approaches are physiological and psychophysical.
Q: What does the physiological approach to studying perception focus on?
A: The physiological approach focuses on what is happening in the brain.
Q: How does the physiological approach study perception through anatomy?
A: It involves studying the structure and function of different parts of the brain related to perception.
Q: What methods are used to record brain activity in the physiological approach?
A: Methods include single-cell recording (not ethical on humans), and imaging techniques like fMRI, MEG, EEG, and PET.
Q: What is microstimulation in the context of physiological studies of perception?
A: Microstimulation involves directly stimulating specific parts of the brain to observe the effects on perception.
Q: What are lesioning and TMS, and how are they used in physiological studies of perception?
A: Lesioning (creating intentional damage to brain areas, not ethical on humans) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) are used to study the effects of disrupting specific brain areas on perception.
Q: What does the psychophysical approach to studying perception focus on?
A: The psychophysical approach focuses on what we perceive, measuring the relationship between stimulus and perception.
Q: What is an absolute (detection) threshold in psychophysics?
A: It is the smallest magnitude of a stimulus that can be perceived.
Q: What is a difference (discrimination) threshold in psychophysics?
A: It is the smallest difference between two stimuli that can be perceived.
Q: How are controlled experiments used in the psychophysical approach?
A: Controlled experiments are used to test and measure perceptual performance under various conditions.
