4.1 psychophysics and gestalt psychology

Question 1

sensory organs

Answer 1

give us the raw material that we need to understand the world through their sensitivity to different types of energy
these organs then send info about that that energy to the brain, which performs further processing

Question 2

perception

Answer 2

the next step of organizing and coming to a meaningful understanding of the info sent by the sensory organs

Question 3

transduction

Answer 3

the process of converting basic sensory info into neural activity that the brain can interpret

Question 4

doctrine of specific nerve energies

Answer 4

proposed by Johannes Muller, 1826
in order to keep organization of our 5 senses, signals from our sensory input are sent to different brain areas, separate brain areas are specialized for different sensory input is called the doctrine of specific nerve energies

Question 5

Orienting responses

Answer 5

occur when surprising and new events capture our attention

Question 6

sensory adaptation

Answer 6

we are set up to devote less attention to very familiar stimuli
(ex. we experience adaptation as boredom when engaging in repetitive, routine activities)

Question 7

psychophysics

Answer 7

gustav fechner
methods for investigating what humans can sense from their environment
-seeks to measure the relationship b/w the energy detected by our sensory organs and our psychological experience of that energy

Question 8

absolute threshold

Answer 8

the minimum amount of energy or amount of a stimulus that we can detect at least 50% of the time

Question 9

difference threshold

Answer 9

the smallest difference b/w stimuli we can detect at least 50% of the time
AKA just noticeable difference (JND)

Question 10

weber’s / fechnerk’s law

Answer 10

differences in intensity are more difficult to detect at higher intensities

Question 11

signal detection theory

Answer 11

considers both the amount of stimulation that people receive with their personal threshold for reporting the presence of a stimulus or a change in stimulus intensity
-generates 4 different outcomes

Question 12

stimulus present and you saw it

Answer 12

hit

Question 13

stimulus present and you didn’t see it

Answer 13

miss

Question 14

stimulus absent and you saw it

Answer 14

false alarm

Question 15

stimulus absent and you didn’t see it

Answer 15

correct rejection

Question 16

sensation

Answer 16

the process that our sensory organs perform when they receive information about the world around us, this is the earliest possible step in allowing us to know how to respond effectively to events

Question 17

structuralism

Answer 17

focused on the elementary units of perception…which is like focusing on the separate lines that form a connect the dots image

Question 18

gestalt psychology

Answer 18

• insisted that perception is far more than simply the component parts that go into it
• the idea that something more than the parts emerges out of the way that we organize perceptual features
• origin of motion pictures and animation
• we infer non-existent motion when the images of the two circles are presented repeatedly and close together in time

Question 19

figure-ground principle

Answer 19

we use the visual features of objects to determine which are the objects in our environment and what parts are the background
-what we perceive as figure vs. ground depends on how we organize visual features
faces/goblet example

Question 20

law of similarity

Answer 20

grouping objects together according to features they have in common

Question 21

law of proximity

Answer 21

grouping objects together according to their closeness in space

Question 22

law of continuity

Answer 22

grouping features together when some part of them is obscured by another object

Question 23

law of closure

Answer 23

we infer that features with pieces missing belong to the same object if the features of the object are consistent for that type of inference

Question 24

bottom up processing

Answer 24

perception that derives from sensory inputs

Question 25

top down processing

Answer 25

perception that derives from our prior experiences and expectations
-is to blame for misunderstandings

Question 26

divided attention

Answer 26

attention to multiple sources of input
-divided attention is okay if the all the sources are fairly simple
(ex chew gum, walk, and plan evening)

Question 27

selective attention

Answer 27

won’t be aware of any other source of info

ex. studying, performance is best if you focus only on this task
con. might miss out on stuff going around them

Question 28

inattentional blindness

Answer 28

when focused on another aspect of the scene, people can even fail to notice a gorilla passing through