Chapter 5 - Sensation & Perception

Question 1

What is transduction?

Answer 1

The processing of sensory stimulus by the brain

Question 2

What is audition?

Answer 2

sense of hearing

Question 3

What is gustation?

Answer 3

sense of taste

Question 4

What is vestibular sense?

Answer 4

sense of balance

Question 5

What is proprioception?

Answer 5

sense of body position

Question 6

What is kinesthesia?

Answer 6

sense of body movement

Question 7

What is nociception?

Answer 7

sense of pain

Question 8

What is thermoception?

Answer 8

sense of temperature

Question 9

What is olfaction?

Answer 9

sense of smell

Question 10

What is the absolute threshold?

Answer 10

minimum amount of stimulus required to be detected 50% of the time

Question 11

Just Noticeable Difference (JND) is also known as?

Answer 11

difference threshold

Question 12

What is the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) a.k.a. the difference threshold?

Answer 12

how much difference in stimuli is required to detect a difference between them. (e.g. phone screen lighting up in a movie theater vs. at a basketball game -> the cellphone light doesn’t change, but the difference in perception of brightness does).

Question 13

Weber’s Law states

Answer 13

the difference threshold is a constant fraction of the original stimulus

Question 14

Bottom-up processing vs. top-down processing?

Answer 14

Bottom-up processing: sensory info. from the environment driving a process.

Top-down processing: knowledge and expectation driving a process.

Question 15

Sensory adaptation

Answer 15

not perceiving stimuli that remains constant over prolonged periods

Question 16

Inattentional blindness

Answer 16

failure to notice something visible because attention was attending to something else

Question 17

Signal detection theory

Answer 17

ability to identify a stimulus when it’s embedded in distractions

Question 18

What is amplitude?

Answer 18

distance from flat to the peak of crest or trough

Question 19

What is wavelength?

Answer 19

length between one peak to the next

Question 20

What is frequency?

Answer 20

number of waves that pass a given point in a given period of time

Question 21

What are Hertz?

Answer 21

cycles per second

Question 22

What wavelengths make up the visible spectrum for humans?

Answer 22

380-740mm

Question 23

What Hertz are audible to humans?

Answer 23

20-20000 Hz

Question 24

Opponent-process theory is

Answer 24

some cells of the visual system are “turned off” by certain colors. (e.g. a cell associated with green would be inhibited to red)

Question 25

Binocular disparity

Answer 25

slightly different view of the world that each of our eyes receives

Question 26

What is temporal theory?

Answer 26

assertion that frequency is coded by activity level of sensory neuron i.e. pitch perception

Question 27

What is place theory?

Answer 27

asserts that different portions of the basilar membrane are sensitive to different frequencies

Question 28

Monaural vs. Binaural

Answer 28

one-eared vs. two eared

Question 29

Interaural level difference is?

Answer 29

refers to the fact that a sound coming from one side of your body is more intense at that side because of the attenuation of the sound as it passes through your head

Question 30

What is attenuation?

Answer 30

reduction of amplitude over time

Question 31

Interaural timing difference is?

Answer 31

refers to the small difference in the time at which a given sound wave arrives at each ear

Question 32

How does Gestalt Psychology fit into sensation and perception?

Answer 32

perception involves more than just combining sensory stimuli

Question 33

Continuity (good continuation)

Answer 33

suggests that we are more likely to perceive continuous flowing lines, rather than broken ones

Question 34

similarity

Answer 34

asserts that things that are alike tend to be grouped together

Question 35

Proximity

Answer 35

asserts that things that are close to one another tend to be perceived as grouped together

Question 36

Closure

Answer 36

we organize our perceptions into complete objects

Question 37

Difference between sensation & perception?

Answer 37

sensation is collecting info. from environment; perception is how we interpret that info.

Question 38

Three founders of Gestalt Theory?

Answer 38

Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka, Wolfgang Kohler