Chapter 5 Flashcards
What is the difference between sensation and interpretation?
Sensation is the physical manner in which sensory receptors detect stimuli, and interpretation is the way the brain perceives and consciously experiences a stimulus
What is the doctrine of specific nerve energies?
The principle that different sensory modalities exist because sensory organs stimulate different nerve pathways leading to different area of the brain, which is called anatomical code
Alex consistently sees colours associated with certain words. What condition might Alex have?
Synesthesia
What is functional coding?
It is used to figure out what our sensory receptors are sensing. Information about which cells are firing, as well as the amount and rate of cells firing forms a functional code
A volunteer is put in a dark room with a black screen. The screen then changes to green. Researchers ask the volunteer to say when he thinks the shade of green changes. What are the researchers testing?
The volunteer’s difference threshold
What is the absolute threshold?
The minimum amount of energy or quantity of a stimulus needed to be reliably detected at least 50% of the time it is presented
For a stimulus threshold, how is a “just noticeable difference” expressed?
A Weber fraction
Signal detection theory is a psychophysical theory that divides the detection of a sensory signal into a _______ process and a _______ process.
sensory, decision
True or false: there is a bear in the woods and Bob does not hear it. This is an example of a miss.
True
True or false: there is not a bear in the woods but Bob hears one. This is an example of a correct rejection.
False. This is an example of a false alarm
If there is a bear in the woods and Bob hears it, what is it an example of?
A hit
True or false: there is not a bear in the woods and Bob does not hear one. This is an example of a correct rejection
True
Not being conscious of the feeling of wearing clothes all the time is an example of what?
Sensory adaptation
