Chapter 4 & 5: Sensation And Perception Flashcards
Accessory structures
Structures, such as the lens of the eye, that modify a stimulus.
Ex. Outer part of the ear has an accessory structure that helps to collect and redirect sound.
Neural receptors
Specialized cells that detect certain forms of energy and transduce them into nerve cell activity
Ex. Touching something hot, nerves send message
Specific energy doctrine
The discovery that stimulation of a particular sensory nerve provided codes for that sense, no matter how the stimulation takes place.
Ex. Applying gentle pressure to your closed eye will produce activity in the optic nerve and you will sense little lights
Loudness
A psychological dimension of sound determined by the amplitude of a sound wave.
Ex. Describes as decibels
Pitch
How low or high a tone sounds.
Ex. Depends on frequency of sound wave.
Timbre
The mixture of frequencies and amplitudes that make up the quality of sound.
Ex. What allows you to tell the difference between the same not played on a flute vs. the violin
Ocular accommodation
The ability of the lens to change its shape and bend light rays so that objects are in focus.
Ex. Can lose flexibility and result in “far sighted”
Photoreceptors
Specialized cells in the retina that code light energy into nerve cell activity.
Photopigments generate a signal to the brain
Photopigments
Chemicals in photoreceptors that respond to light and assist in converting light into nerve cell activity.
Ex. When you come out of a dark movie theater and your eyes take a while to adjust, it’s because your photoreceptors do not have enough photopigments yet.
Dark adaption
The increasing ability to see in the dark as time in the dark increases.
Ex. Get used to walking around dark house after light has been turned off for a while.
Visual acuity
Visual clarity, which is greatest in the fovea because of its large concentration of cones.
Ex. Ability to see small details.
Optic chiasm
Part of the bottom surface of the brain where half of each optic nerves fibers cross over to the opposite side of the brain.
Info from right side of visual field goes to left side of brain.
Hue
The essential “color” determined by the dominant wavelength of light.
Wavelength of yellow is less than red
Color saturation
The purity of color.
A color is more pure if one wave length has more energy than the other.
Brightness
The overall intensity of all the wavelengths That make up light
Ex. Yellow is brighter than dark purple.
Proprioceptive senses
The sensory systems that allow us to know about body position and what each part of our body is doing
Ex. Knowing your legs are crossed while you’re writing
Proprioceptors
Receptors in muscled and joints that provide information to the brain bout movement and body position.
Ex. Moving your arm-> receptors in joints transduce mechanical energy into nerve cell activity.
Perception
The process through which people take raw sensations from the environment and interpret them, using knowledge, experience, and understanding of the world, so that the sensations become meaningful experiences.
Psychophysics
An area of research focusing on the relationship between the physical characteristics of environmental stimuli and the psychological experiences those stimuli produce.
Ex. Physical processing of information and how they perceive it.
(Lights-> experimentalism-> Wihelm Wundt)
Sublimation stimulation
Stimulation that is too weak or brief to be perceived.
This is below our “absolute threshold”
Signal detection theory
A mathematical model of what determines a persons report that a near the whole stimulus has or has not occurred.
Variability rather than notion of absolutes.
Perceptual organization
The task of determining what edges and other stimuli go together to form and object.
Fed Ex’s Arrow
Figure ground discrimination
The ability to organize a visual scene so that it contains meaningful figures set against a less relevant ground.
Gestalt laws
Proposed number of principles that describe how perceptual systems group stimuli into a world of shape and objects
Proximity
The closer objects or events are to one another, the more likely we are to perceive them as belonging together.
Similarity
Perceive similar events as part of a group.
Continuity
When sensations appear to creat a continuous form, we tend to perceive them as belonging together.
Closure
We tend to fill in missing contours to form a complete object
Texture
When basic features of stimuli have the same texture
Simplicity
We tend to see features of stimulus in a way that provides the smallest interpretation.
Common fate
When objects move in the same direction at the same speed, we perceive them as together.
Ex. Dancers that move in unison
Depth perception
The ability to perceive distance.
We see 3-D even though we receive info from 2-D retinas
Interposition
A depth cue whereby closer objects block ones view of things farther away.
Chalk art
Gradient of textures
A graduated change in the texture, or grain, of the visual field whereby objects with finer, less detailed textures are perceived as more distant
Motion parallax
A depth cue whereby a difference in apparent rate of movement of different objects provides information about the relative distance of those objects.
Retinal disparity
A depth cue based on the difference between two retinal images.
Closing one eye. Vs the other.
Perceptual constancy
The perception of objects as constant in size, shape, color, and other properties despite changes in their retinal images
Ex. Person is walking towards you and getting closer NOT getting bigger
Parallel distribution processing
A theoretical model of object recognition in which various elements of the object are thought to be simultaneously analyzed by several widely distributed but connected neural units in the brain.
Ex. “Visualize and apple” -> smell, taste, color, etc. all come together to visualize object. (Brain is pulling multiple sensory experiences together at the same time)
