Chapter 3 Flashcards
What are visual illusions?
Physical stimuli that consistently produce errors in perception
Nerve cells in the visual system, anywhere from the retina back to the occipital lobe, are known as ______
Visual neurons
What are lateral inhibitors?
surrounding regions of white in a high contrast visual scene that serve to suppress the overall output of cells that correspond to specific regions in the visual field
The information captured on our retinas is _______
Two-dimensional
What is Bottom-Up processing?
The brains process of starting with recognizing the smaller pieces and builds up to the whole.
What does bottom-up processing focus on? What does top-down processing focus on?
What the stimulus is vs. the function/meaning of the stimulus
The multilayered light-sensitive surface in the eye that records electromagnetic energy and converts it to neural impulses for processing in the brain is known as the _______
retina
In the context of visual perception, ________ is the bringing together and integration of what is processed by different neural pathways or cells.
binding
T/F: Rods are found everywhere except in the fovea.
True
The purpose of sensation and perception from an evolutionary perspective is _______
to aid in adaptation that improves a species’ chances for survival.
T/F: The outer ear consists of the pinna and the external auditory canal.
True
Manuel’s ability to distinguish between a trumpet and a trombone and his mother’s voice from his sister’s voice is most likely due to the ________ of these stimuli.
timbre
T/F: the semicircle canals of the inner ear contain the sensory receptors that detect head motion caused when people tilt or move their heads and/or bodies.
True
In the context of sensory receptors, the intensity of the stimulus is communicated to the brain by varying the ________ of action potentials sent to the brain.
frequency
What are sensory receptors?
Hair cells that line the basilar membrane in the ear. Sensory receptors are the openings through which the brain and nervous system experience the world.
A predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular way is known as _________
a perceptual set
What is parallel processing?
It is the simultaneous distribution of information across different neural pathways.
If we see a German shepherd standing 30 feet away from us, we recognize that it is just as big as it was when it was much closer to us. This is primarily due to ________
size constancy
What is sensation?
Sensation is the process of receiving stimulus energies from our external environment and transforming those energies into neural energies. Sensation is the way we take in information from the outside world.
What is perception?
Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense. Perception is the experience of our biological processes interactions with the outside environment, the way we identify meaningful patterns.
In the context of depth perception, familiar size and relative size, height in field of view, and shading are examples of ______
binocular cues
What colors do short wavelengths produce vs long wavelengths?
Short: blue colors
Long: red colors
What colors do great amplitudes produce vs small amplitudes?
Great: bright colors
Small: dull colors
What are rods
Light receptors for black, white and grey colors. It picks up movement, peripheral vision and twilight vision (when light is limited)
What are cones
Light receptors for colors and detail.
Functions best in well lit conditions
What is the optic nerve
Carries neural impulses from your eye to your brain
What is a blind spot
Where the optic nerve connects to your eyes - a spot with no receptor cells
What is a fovea
The central focus point of your retina
Rods vs cones information:
More rods than cones
Rods in periphery, cones in center
What is the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory?
The retina contains 3 color receptors (green, red, blue) that can produce any color when stimulated in combination
What is the opponent process theory?
Opposing retinal processes that enable our color vision. Some cells are stimulated by red and some are inhibited by green and vice versa.
What are the 4 forms that was process at the same time?
Motion, Color, Depth, Form
What are the stages of processing?
Retinal processing
Feature detection
Parallel processing
Recognition
What is retinal disparity?
Retinas receive slightly different images of the world
Wavelength = frequency = pitch
What is the Ear Drum and where is it located?
a tight membrane where sound waves strike, outer ear
What is the middle ear?
A chamber between the ear drum and the cochlea
What is the Cochlea?
A fluid filled tube in the inner ear - vibrations cause hairs to move in the ear that then trigger nerve impulses
What are the 3 main structures of the inner ear?
Cochlea, semicircular canals, vestibular sacs
Once sound gets to the inner ear, what is the process of sound?
It hits the auditory nerve, then goes to the thalamus (brain) then to auditory cortex (temporal lobe)
What are some important things about the cochlea hairs?
- 16,000 of them
- processes very fast and are very sensitive
- any physical damage to hairs causes sensorineural hearing loss
- any sounds loud enough that you can’t talk over can be damaging to your hearing
What is conduction hearing loss?
Damage to your eardrum and middle ear
What is specific to loud sounds?
The activate neighboring hair cells as well as the ones on/in the cochlea
What is the “place theory” and the “frequency theory”?
Place theory: pitch is a specific place where cochlea’s membrane is stimulated
Frequency theory: the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve makes the frequency of tone, which leads to pitch
These two theories work together to allow you to hear pitch
What are two important things that pain tolerance depends on?
- genetics
- physical characteristic (nerves)
What is the Gate-Control theory and where is it located?
Located in the spinal cord
Theory: spinal cord contains a “gate” and allows pain to travel through to the brain or to get stopped at the gate.
What are 3 psychological influences of pain?
- Focus (if winning matter to you more than pain)
- Editing of memories of pain (childbirth)
- Tapering down pain meds can make us remember it as not so bad
What is taste?
A chemical sense - taste buds catch food chemicals and release neurotransmitters in the brain
Taste receptors reproduce every 1-2 weeks
What is smell and what is another name for it?
Smell is a chemical sense (only sense that bypasses the thalamus) that goes through receptor cells at the top of the nasal cavity.
Also called “olfaction”
What is kinesthesia
Sensing position and movement of individual body parts
What is vestibular sense
Monitoring head position and movement (faster than vision)
