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.
