3 - sensation and perception

Question 1

where on the pyramid of learning is sensation?

Answer 1

bottom layers - low level concept

Question 2

sensation

Answer 2

the detection of simple properties of stimuli that occurs via sensory organs

Question 3

how many sensory modalities are there?

Answer 3

5

Question 4

what are the 5 different sensory modalities?

Answer 4

• gustation/taste
• oflaction/smell
• vision
• audition
• somatosensation - mixed sensory categoru

Question 5

what 5 body senses are categorised as somatosensation?

Answer 5

• detection of touch
• thermoception
• vestibular sense (balance)
• proprioception
• nociception

Question 6

what are the 2 chemo senses?

Answer 6

gustation and olfaction - both detect chemical systems

Question 7

sensory transduction

Answer 7

energy from the environment is converted into neural activity

Question 8

what are the two types of sensory coding?

Answer 8

anatomical
temporal

Question 9

what is anatomical sensory coding?

Answer 9

when different nerves represent different modalities and stimuli from the same modalities are distinguished depending on location

Question 10

anatomical coding is when different nerves from different parts of the body travel to different parts of the primary somatosensory cortex. what determines how much of the cortex is devoted to different body parts?

Answer 10

how richly innervated the region is with nerve fibres

Question 11

what is temporal sensory coding?

Answer 11

when the rate of firing of axons represents/encodes the stimulus intensity

Question 12

absolute threshold

Answer 12

the minimum level of a stimulus that can be detected

Question 13

absolute threshold (signal detection theory)

Answer 13

the level at which a stimulus will be detected a specific percentage of the time

Question 14

difference threshold

Answer 14

the minimum detectable difference between two stimuli

Question 15

perception

Answer 15

our interpretation of what is represented by sensory input

Question 16

what is form perception?

Answer 16

how we differentiate between figures and grounds

Question 17

boundaries

Answer 17

sharp distinct changes in brightness, colour and patterns

Question 18

what is gestalt psychology?

Answer 18

• a set of laws to outline the natural compulsion to find order in disorder
• foundation for modern study of perception

Question 19

what are the 6 gestalt principles?

Answer 19

1. figure-ground principle
2. similarity principle
3. adjacency-proximity principle
4. good continuation principle
5. the law of closure
6. the principle of common fate

Question 20

figure ground principle

Answer 20

people instinctively perceive objects as either being in the foregorund or the background

Question 21

similarity principle

Answer 21

similar elements are perceived as belonging together

Question 22

adjacency-proximity principle

Answer 22

elements of a visual scene that are close to each other appear to form groups

Question 23

good continuation principles

Answer 23

elements that smoothly follow a line are perceived to belong together

Question 24

the law of closure

Answer 24

missing information is supplied to close or complete a figrue

Question 25

principle of common fate

Answer 25

elements on the same movement trajectory belong together

Question 26

list 3 ideas about how the brain recognises objects so quickly?``

Answer 26

* templates - brain uses templates of objects to find an exact match * prototypes - patterns of visual input are compared with prototypes to find similar object * feature distinct models - visual system encodes images of familiar patterns in terms of distinct features

Question 27

geons

Answer 27

the simple 2D or 3D forms such as cylinders, bricks, wedges, cones, circles and rectangles corresponding to the simple parts of an object in Biederman's recognition-by-components theory

Question 28

what 'top-down' influences can affect perception?

Answer 28

knowledge, motivations, experiences, context

Question 29

perceptual set

Answer 29

selectivity bias with respect to what we perceive

Question 30

attention

Answer 30

the allocation of awareness to a stimulus

Question 31

how does attention affect our perception?

Answer 31

* enhances signals and perception of relevant stimuli * inihibits signals and perception of irrelevant stimuli

Question 32

our capacity for conscious processing is limited - how does the brain combat this?

Answer 32

we use selective attention - responsible for allocating the limited resource of awareness

Question 33

inattentional blindness

Answer 33

the observation that when we fixate of something, we can fail to notice otherwise obvious events

Question 34

change blindness

Answer 34

a person can be oblivious to changes in the visual scene, if our attention is directed somewhere else

Question 35

how can unattended stimuli affect us?

Answer 35

we can still produce memories of these stimuli, even though we were not consciously aware of them