chapter 3 Flashcards
sensation and perception ultimately form the basis of our?
behaviour
sensation refers to?
the physcial reality of the signals that our sensory organs pick up and send to be processed in the nervous system
perception refers to
how we interpret those signals (what we experience subjectively)
sensory receptors
refers to specialized dendrites of sensory neurons that respond to various kinds of physical stimuli by generating action potentials that are sent upstream towards the CNS for further processing
within the PNS, such neurons are bundled into what?
- nerves (collection of axons)
- ganglia (collection of cell bodies)
sensory receptros communicate which 4 properties to the CNS
- location (where stimulus is coming from)
- modality (what type of stimulus it is)
- intensity (the frequency of action potentials produced by a stimulus)
- duration (how long a stimulus last)
“lick my icky dick”
exteroreceptors
- respond to stimuli from the outside world
interoreceptors
- respond to stimuli from inside the body
chemoreceptors
- respond to chemical stimuli
olfactory receptors
- involved in the sense of smell
- a type of chemoreceptor
gustatory receptors
- taste receptor
- type of chemoreceptor
photoreceptors and hair cells
- responsible for vision (respond to specific wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, or light)
- in the inner ear convert pressure signals from osund waves into action potentials
- semicircular canals contain endolymph which moves in response to rotational acceleration and results in the movement puts pressure on hair cells on the crista ampullaris that respond by sending info to the NS
mechanoreceptors
- responsible for touch and respond to mechanical stimuli and various specific types of touch stimuli exist
thermoreceptors
- specialize in detecting either warm or cold temperatures
nociceptors
- receptors that detect pain (different types to detect pain to mechanical, thermal, or chemical stimuli)
baroreceptor
- type of interoreceptor that detects pressure in the body such as on the walls of blood vessels
osmoreceptors
- type of interoreceptor that detects the concentration of solutes in blood and trigger responses when the blood becomes too dilute or too concentrated
proximal stimulus
- what a sensory receptor detects
distal stimulus
- is the object in the environment that causes those signals
absolute threshold
the level of intensity that a stimulus must have in order to be picked up by sensory neurons (yes-or-no phenomenon)
threshold of concious perception
- the threshold that a stimulus must cross in order for us to be able to consciously perceive it at all
just-noticable difference (JND)
- the smallest change in the magnitude of a stimulus that we can perceive as being different
- also called difference threshold
psychosocial discrimination testing
- researchers test whether research subjects can tell the difference between 2 stimuli and then link those findings to the actual physical properties of the stimuli being studied
Weber’s law
- states thar for any given sensory input, the just-noticeable difference will be a constant proportion of the original input
- works within a range of what we might encounter on a day-to-day basis, but not ones that are either so faint to be nearly undetectable or so large to overwhelm our ability to process them (stops working well at the extremes of sensory input)











