Chapter 6 Flashcards
What is sensation?
Awareness resulting from the stimulation of sense organ. Nose, eyes, touch, taste
What is perception?
the organization and interpretation of sensations.
What is Transduction?
The process that sensation and perception occurs through. The conversation of stimuli detected by receptor cells to electrical impulse that are then transported to th brain.
What is Psychophysics?
A branch of psychology that studies the effects of physical stimuli sensory perceptions and mental states.
What is the threshold of sensation?
The intensity of a stimulus that allows an organism to just barley detect it.
What is a “miss” in signal detection analysis?
When you say no and there was a signal
What is a Signal detection analysis?
a technique used to determine the ability of the perceiver to separate true signals from background.
What has to happen for a hit to occur?
when the listener correctly says yes when there was a signal
What happens when there’s a false alarm?
When there’s no signal and the participant says yes
What has to happen for a correct rejection to occur?
When you say no to no signal
What does sensitivity refer to?
The true ability of the individual to detect the presence or absence of signals
people with better hearing will have higher sensiti
What does response bias refer to in behavior?
Refers to a behavioural tendency to respond to yes to the trials, which is independent of sensitivity.
What is a difference threshold?
The change in a stimulus that can just be detected by the stimulus
What is Weber’s law?
The just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion of the original intensity of the stimulus.
It is easier to detect a 1 kg increase in weight if you start with 1kg than 101.12 kg
pulses of energy waves that carry info from place to place are called what
Electromagnetic energy
Our eyes use what to see?
Electromagnetic waves
What are the three characteristics of light?
Hue, saturation and brightness
Hue is a dimension of visual experience characterized by what?
color names, which is related to the lights wavelength
What is saturation?
The vividness or purity of color, the wideness of the range of wavelengths.
What is brightness in relation to sight?
The amount or intensity of the lights an object emits or reflects. The higher the amplitude of the wave, the brighter it will be.
According to eye anatomy, what is the cornea?
A clear covering that protects the eye, and begins to focus the incoming light.
What is the pupil?
A small opening in the center of the eye
What is the iris?
the colored part of the eye that controls the size of the pupil by constricting or dilating in responce to light intensity.
What does the lens do?
Focuses incoming light?
What is the retina?
Layer of tissue at the back of the eye that contains photo receptor cells.
What is visual accommodation?
he process of changing the curvature of the lens to keep the light entering the eye focused on the retina
What does it mean to be nearsighted?
Objects near look fine but objects far away are blurry
What does it mean to be farsighted?
Objects near are blurry while objects far away are fine
What is the optic nerve?
a collection of millions of ganglion neurons that sends vast amounts of visual information, via the thalamus, to the brain.
What is the fovea?
the central part of the fovea
What are cones?
Visual neurons that are specialized in detecting fine detail and colors
What are rods?
Visual neurons that specialize in detecting edges of figures by comparing shades of black, white and grey
What organ helps with peripheral vision and seeing in the dark?
Rods
What is a blind spot?
where the optic nerve exits the eye and no photo receptors are present.
What is Lateral antagonism (lateral inhibition)?
Neural activity in a cell opposes activity in other cells
What is Contralateral Control?
is when the one cerebral hemisphere is mainly responsible for processing or control of one half of the body
What is referred to as “binocular field”?
Where the eyes overlap
What neurons are referred to as features?
Neurons that respond to specific info from a stimuli
What are the neurons called that are located in the visual cortex and that respond to the strength, angles, shapes, edges, and movements of a visual stimulus?
Detector Neurons
The three primary colors that create the seven million color variations are-?
Red, Green, and Blue.
What is the Trichromatic color theory?
What colour we see depends on the mix of signals.
What colors correspond with long, medium, and short cones?
- Long cones: respond to long wavelengths (red)
- Medium cones: respond to medium wavelengths (green)
- Short cones respond to short wavelengths (blue)
If the brain is receiving primarily red and blue signals, what color will it perceive?
Purple
What does someone experience with color blindness?
A lack of functioning in the red and/or green cones.
What does it mean to have an “after image”?
When we stare at a colour for a long time, the image will disappear. Creating an after image.
Opponent-process color theory proposes what?
The Idea that we analyze sensory info not in three colours, but in opponent colours. Red-green, Blue-yellow, and white-black
What are figures and Ground?
The idea that we structure input so that we can always see a figure against a background.
What is the idea of simularity?
Stimuli that are similar to each other tend to be grouped together
What is depth perception?
The ability to perceive three - dimensional space and to accurately judge distance.
Eleanor and Gibson tested the ability to perceive depth in babies, what did they conclude?
They concluded that depth perception is instinctual . Even though other studies have shown that infants learn depth perception.
Depth reception is the result of our depth cues, which are what?
Messages from our bodies and the external envoirment that supply us with info about space and distance.
What are binocular depth cues?
depth cues that are created by retinal image disparity and require the coordination of both eyes. Use both eyes to create an image.
What is Accommodation?
The retina changing curvature in order to bring an image into focus.
What are monocular depth cues?
Depth cues that help perceive an image using one eye.
What is the idea of position?
We tend to see higher up in our vision as further away.
What is the idea of Relative size?
Assuming that objects in a scene are the same size, smaller objects are perceived as farther away.
What is linear perspective?
The idea that parallel lines converge at a distance
What is the idea of perspective?
Objects that appear hazy, or that are covered with smog or dust, appear farther away.
What is an Arial perspective?
Causes objects to look further away if they are less detailed.
What is frequency?
the wavelength of the sound wave
the perceived frequency of a sound is what?
Pitch
Do longer sound waves produce a lower or higher frequency?
Lower
What is Amplitude?
Height of the sound wave
What is loudness?
Determined by the amplitude of the wave and is the degree of sound volume.
What is Timbre?
The distinguishing quality of sound
What is Pinna?
the outside ear that helps guides sounds into the auditory canal.
What is each of the 3 tiny bones known as ossicles known as individually?
the hammer (malleus) the anvil (incus) The stirrup (stapes)
What do the ossicles do?
send vibrations to the cochlea
What is the cochlea?
A snail shaped liquid filled tube in the inner ear that contains the cilia
The oval window is the membrane covering the opening of the what?
The cochlea
What are the cilia?
Hair cells in cochlea that are triggered by coclea vibrations that send electrical signals to the auditory nerve than to to the auditory cortex in the brain.
Summarize the auditory Transduction?
- Sound waves enter ear and travel through auditory canal to eardrum (tympanic membrane).
- The sound waves cause the eardrum to vibrate.
- Small bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) in middle ear are then made to vibrate, and they amplify the sound.
- The membrane across the opening between middle ear and inner ear (oval window) next begins to vibrate.
- Vibrations of the oval window cause fluid to move in the cochlea.
- Fluid motions in cochlea cause vibrations in the basilar membrane.
- Vibrations of the basilar membrane are detected by the hair cells lining the basilar membrane.
- Hair cells trigger release of neurotransmitters, resulting in nerve impulses being sent to brain.
What is the frequency theory of hearing?
- the rate, or frequency, with which the basilar membrane vibrates
- Neurons work together and fire in sequence allowing us to detect sounds up to about 4,000 hertz
- This theory has a problem with high-pitched sounds, however, because the neurons cannot fire fast enough
What is the place theory of hearing?
proposes that different areas of the cochlea respond to different frequencies
The head casts a sound shadow, which is what?
sounds coming from the right will sound much louder than the left, and vice versa.
What is Conductive hearing loss caused by?
Damage to the ear
What is sensorineural hearing loss caused by?
Damage to the cilia or auditory nerve
What is Tinnitus?
a ringing or buzzing in the ear.
Caused by blunt force trauma and being exposed to loud sounds.
What is a cochlear implant?
A device made up of a series of electrodes that are placed inside the cochlea to bypass the hair cells and stimulate the auditory
The tongue detects six different taste sensations, what are they?
Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, piquancy (spicy) and unami (savoury)
What happens as we chew food?
It dissolves and the smal chemical enters the gaps between the bumps on our tounge and enter taste buds then trigger nerve impulses that are transmitted to the brain.
Taste signals travel to the what?
Medulla, up through the thalamus over to the gustatory cortex.
What happens to the airborne chemical molecules when we breathe in the air?
they are detected by 10 million to 20 million receptor cells embedded in the olfactory membrane of the upper nasal passage.
the skin is covered with many different types of nerve endings- true or false?
True
Proprioception is the ability to what?
To sense the position and movement of our body parts
The ability to keep track of where the body is moving is also provided by the vestibular system, which is what?
A set of liquid filled areas in the inner ear that monitors the heads position and movement , mainting the body s balance.
Gate control theory of pain is what?
Proposes that pain is determined by the operation of two types of nerve fibres in the spinal
The experience pathway is what?
the fibres takes info from the body to the brain, allowing you to experience pain
The gate pathway is what?
The fibers stops or starts the flow of pain, like a gate
What is Sensory interaction?
The working together of different senses to create experience
The McGurk Effect is what?
An error in perception that occurs when we misperceive sounds because the audio doesn’t match the visual.
The most common form is what?
perceving letters and numbers as having colour
The ability to focus on one stimulus is what?
Selective attention
All of a sudden hearing your name at a party is called what?
Cocktail party phenomenon
What is Sensory adaptation?
a decreased sensitivity to a stimulus after prolonged and constant exposure.
Saccades are what?
quick eye movements
Perceptual constancy is what?
So its the ability to constantly perceive a stimulus no matter its orientation
What are illusions?
Illusions are when our perception is fooled.
An example of an illusion is the cafe wall illusion, which is what?
The lines look slanted are actually straight
Moon Illusion is what?
When the moon i near the horizon its perceived as bigger but when its overhead its perceived as smaller.
Embodiment is when nature is-
built and linked into into our cognition
Continuity is when-
when we perceive stimuli in sooth ways rather discontinuous ways.
The closure is when-
We tend to fill in gaps in an incomplete image to create a complete, whole object.
