CHapter 4: Sensation & Perception Flashcards
What is the stimulation/absorption of energy of sense organs known as?
Sensation
What is the selection, organization and interpretation of sensory input into something meaningful?
Perception
What is the study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experience?
Psychophysics
Who determined that a threshold is required to know what stimuli are requires to cause a sensation?
Gustav Fechner
What is the dividing point between energy levels that do and do not have a detectable effect?
The threshold
What is known as the minimum amount of stimulation that an organism can detect for a specific type of sensory input?
The Absolute threshold
What is the real absolute threshold?
When the stimulus is detected 50% of the time
What is the smallest difference in the amount of stimulation that a specific sense can detect known as?
Just noticeable difference (JND)
As stimuli increase in magnitude, what happens to the JND?
The JND becomes larger
What is the law that the size of a JND is a constant proportion of the size of the initial stimulus?
Weber’s Law
> meaning that as stimuli increase in magnitude, the JND becomes larger
What is the law that says that the magnitude of a sensory experience is proportional to the number of JNDs that the stimulus causing the experience is above the absolute threshold?
Fechner’s law
> meaning that constant increments in stimulus intensity produce smaller and smaller increases in the perceived magnitude of sensation.
What is the theory that detection of stimuli involves decision processes as well as sensory processes, which are both then affected by other factors than stimulus intensity?
Signal -detection theory
What does signal-detection theory replace?
IT replaces Fechner’s sharp threshold with the concept of detectability
What is measured in terms of probability and depends on decision-making processes + sensory processes?
Detectability
What is the registration of sensory input without conscious awareness?
Subliminal perception
What is the gradual decline in sensitivity due to prolonged stimulation?
Sensory adaptation
What does sensory adaption allow people to do?
Focus on changes and not constants
Is there a one-to-one correspondence between sensory input and sensory experience?
No, people’s experience depends on physical stimuli and processing of stimulus inputs
What is the most important requirement for sight?
Light
What is the form of electromagnetic radiation that travels as a wave moving at the seed of light?
Light
What are the four possible outcomes of signal-detection theory?
- Hits (signal there> see signal)
- Misses (signal there> miss signal)
- False alarms (no signal> see signal)
- correct rejections (no signal> no see signal)
What does signal-detection theory depend on in terms of human requirements?
> The criterion set for how sure one must feel before reacting
Level of noise from all the irrelevant stimuli and neural activity they elicit
What are the three measures of light?
- Amplitude > brightness
- Wavelength > colour
- Purity > saturation
What colours are associated with what lengths of waves?
- Shorter = violet > blue
- medium = green > yellow
- Long = orange > red
What colours are associated with what lengths of waves?
- Shorter = violet > blue
- medium = green > yellow
- Long = orange > red
Do people see all light?
No, only a small portion of light wavelengths as the eye is a filter
What are the main components of the eye?
- Cornea (window)
- Lens (focuses light rays> accommodation)
- Pupil (opening that regulates amount of light with the iris)
- Retina (neural tissue lining the back surface of the eye)
- Cones + rods (visual receptors)
- Optic disk (hole where nerve fibres exit eye)
What are the main components of the eye?
- Cornea (window)
- Lens (focuses light rays> accommodation)
- Pupil (opening that regulates amount of light with the iris)
- Retina (neural tissue lining the back surface of the eye)
- Cones + rods
- Optic disk
What is accommodation of the lens and how does it relate to distance?
When the curvature of the lens adjusts to alter visual focus
> lens curves for close-up
> lens flattens for far
What happens in a nearsighted eye?
Focus of light falls short of the retina
> the eyeball is too long
What happens in the farsighted eye?
Focus of light falls beyond the retina
> the eyeball is too short
What happens to the pupil in dim and bright light?
Dim > dilates to allow more light in (less sharp)
Bright > constricts to allow less light in ( more sharp)
What are the constant eye movements called where the eye is scanning the environment and making brief fixations at various parts of stimuli?
Saccades
What is the piece of the central nervous system that is located in the eye?
Retina
What is the blind spot of the eye?
The optic disk
What are the two types of receptors and what are their specialties?
Cones: > daylight and colour vision
> better acuity
> concentrated in centre of retina
Rods: > night and peripheral vision
> more sensitive to dim light
> density greatest just outside of fovea and decrease toward periphery
> far outnumber cones
What is the tiny spot in the centre of the retina that contains only cones and has the greatest visual acuity?
Fovea
Why do people look slightly above or below an object in dim light?
To move it to the rod-dominated area which don’t need as much light to create a clear image
What is the process in which the eyes becomes more sensitive to light in low illumination?
Dark adaptation
What is the process in which the eyes becomes less sensitive to light in high illumination?
Light adaptation
Once an images reaches the cones what is the order of signals to the brain?
Cones/rods> bipolar cells > ganglia > optic nerve
- complex info processing
What is the retinal area that affects the firing of that cell when stimulated?
The receptive field
> rod and cone receptors funnel signals to a particular visual cell
What is the shape of the receptive field?
centre-surround, where light falling in the centre (increase in firing) has the opposite effect (decrease of firing) of light falling in the surrounding area
What happens when receptive fields are stimulated?
The retinal cells send signals to both the brain and laterally toward neighbouring visual cells
> interactive effects on each other
What is the effect called when neural activity in a cell opposes activity in surrounding cells?
Lateral antagonism > opposing effects of the inner vs outer centre-surround receptive field
What does lateral antagonism enable the visual system to do?
Compute the relative amount of light at a point instead of reacting to absolute light levels
> discerning of contrast
Where in the eye are receptive fields smaller?
Fovea
What is the point called at which the optic nerves from the inside half of each eye cross over and then project to the opposite side of the brain?
Optic chiasm
> ensures signals from both eyes go to both hemispheres of the brain
Which side of the brain do axons from the left half of each retina go?
To the left side
> vice versa for the right
After the nerves cross at the optic chiasm, where do they go?
2 pathways:
1st (main) - optic chiasm > thalamus > synapse in the lateral geniculate nucleus > occipital lobe (primary visual cortex)
2nd- optic chiasm> superior colliculus (midbrain) > thalamus > occipital lobe
(coordination of visual with other sensory input)
How is the main visual pathway organized?
Into 2 specialized pathways:
- Magnocellular channel > brightness
- Parvocellular channel > colour
What is parallel processing?
The simultaneous extraction of different information from the same input
What are individual visual cells most responsive to?
More complicated stimuli such as lines and edges
Who identified that simple and complex cells in the visual cortex respond to different stimuli?
Hubel and Wiesel
What do simple and complex visual cells respond to best respectively?
Simple cells- angled line in particular spot of the receptive field
Complex cells- angled line in any position in receptive field or movement
What is the key takeaway of Hubel and Wiesel’s work?
That cells in the visual cortex are highly specialized > feature detectors
What are the neurons that respond to very specific features of more complex visual stimuli?
Feature detectors
After processing in the primary visual cortex, where does visual input go?
To other cortical areas via 2 streams: dorsal and ventral
What do the dorsal and ventral streams process respectively?
Dorsal: where objects are + ACTION
Ventral: what objects are + PERCEPTION
What happens to neurons as they travel through visual system?
They get fussier and more specialized > faces
What is the inability to recognize objects?
Visual agnosia
What is the inability to recognize familiar faces?
Prosopagnosia
What are the typical methods applied to vision research?
- fMRI
- ESB
- observation of brain damaged patients
What happens to neurons as they travel through visual system?
They get fussier and more specialized > faces
What demonstrates how people see colour (hue, brightness & saturation)?
Colour solid
What is the inability to recognize familiar faces?
Prosopagnosia
What are the theories of colour vision?
- Trichromatic theory by Young and Helmholtz
- Opponent process theory by Hering
What is colour?
A psychological interpretation of the mixture of wavelengths (light)
What are the two types of colour mixingand which parallels how humans see colour?
- Subtractive colour mixing: removal of light leaving less light than was originally there (paint, cellophane)
- Additive colour mixing: putting more light in the mixture than exists in any one light itself
> additive colour mixing closest to human perception
What is the theory that the human eye has 3 types of receptors with differing sensitivities of different light wavelengths and what evidence supports this?
Tichromatic theory
> light of any colour can be matched with additive mixing of three primary colours
explains the three deficiencies among dichromats
What is the theory that colour perception depends on receptors that make antagonistic responses to 3 pairs of colours and what is the evidence to support this?
Opponent process theory
> explains complimentary afterimages
resolves the need for four names to describe colours
explains grapheme-colour synesthesia (coloured letters)
What is colour blindness and what are dichromats?
- variety of deficiencies in the ability to distinguish among colours
- most colour blind people are dichromats who have only two colour channels and are insensitive to either red, green or blue