Chapter 6 - Class Powerpoint Flashcards
What is the definition of sensation?
The detection of physical energy emitted or reflected by physical objects. It occurs when energy in the external environment or the body simulates receptors in the sense organs.
What is the definition of perception?
The process by which the brain organizes and interprets sensory information.
What are sense receptors?
Specialized cells that convert physical energy in the environment or physical energy in our bodies into electrical energy that is transmitted as nerve impulses to the brain.
Specialized cells that are separated by the sensory neuron by synapses receive information about vision, hearing, and taste.
What role do dendrites play in sensory sensations?
Dendrites receive information about smell, temperature, and pain.
What is the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies?
Accredited to Müller, it’s the principle that different sensory modalities exist because signals received by the sense organs stimulate different nerve pathways leading to different areas of the brain, possibly allowing for sensory substitution.
What is Synthesia?
Sensory crossover where the stimulation of one sense consistently evokes a sensation in another. A crossover between sensory and perception; perception is registered using more than one sense.
What noteworthy work was done with sensory substitution?
Psychologist Ptito did work primarily with the blind, teaching blind people to interpret impulses from other sense to be routed to sections of the brain involved with vision.
What is the Absolute Threshold?
When measuring senses, the smallest quantity of physical energy that can be reliably detected by an observer (50% of the time). Senses are sharp, but only tuned into a narrow band of physical energies.
What is the Difference Threshold?
The smallest difference in stimulation that can reliably be detected by an observer when two stimuli are compared. Also called the Just Noticeable Difference (JND).
What is the Just Noticeable Difference?
The smallest difference in stimulation that can reliably be detected by an observer when two stimuli are compared.
What is Signal Detection Theory?
A psychological theory that divides the detection of a sensory signal into a sensory process (depends on the intensity of the stimulus) and a decision process (influenced by the observer’s response bias).
What are the four kinds of responses possible in the Signal Detection Theory?
- “Hit”
- “False Alarm”
- “Miss”
- “Correct Rejection”
What is a False Alarm?
Signal Detection Theory, when the subject falsely attributes a signal when there was no signal.
What is a Hit?
Signal Detection Theory, when the subject correctly says a change has occurred.
What is a Miss?
Signal Detection Theory, when the subject fails to correctly say a change has occurred.
What is a Correct Rejection?
Signal Detection Theory, when the subject correctly says that no change occurred.
What is Sensory Adaption?
The reduction or disappearance of sensory responsiveness when stimulation is unchanged or repetitious, preventing humans from having to continuously respond to unimportant information.
What is Sensory Deprivation?
The absence of normal levels of sensory stimulation (example: Romania Orphanage).
What is Sensory Overload?
Overstimulation of the senses. Selective attention can be used to reduce sensory overload.
What is Selective Attention?
The focusing of attention on selected aspects of the environment and the blocking out of others.
What is the Cocktail Party Phenomenon?
A colloquial term for Selective Attention, because of the ability to focus on one person in a loud party. Attributed to Colin Cherry.
What is Inattentional Blindness?
Failure to consciously perceive something you are looking at because you are not attending to it.
What is Hue?
The visual experience specified by colour names and related to the wavelength of light.
What kind of light does the sun produce?
A white light.
What colours do shorter and longer wavelengths tend to be associated with, respectively?
Shorter tends to be violet and blue, while longer ones are red and orange.
What is Brightness?
The dimension of visual experience related to the amount, or intensity, of the light an object emits or reflects. Lightness or luminance.
Generally speaking, how does brightness work?
Generally, the more light an objects reflects, the brighter it appears. However, yellow appears brighter than reds and blues with equal intensity.
What is Saturation?
The vividness or purity of colour, the visual experience related to the complexity of light waves. Changes with how much white or how much black is added.
When is light said to be “pure”?
When light contains only a signal wavelength, said to be completely saturated. White is the opposite of this.
What is the Cornea?
The part of the eye that protects the eye and bends light toward the lens.
What is the Lens?
The part of the eye that focuses on objects by changing shape.
What is the Iris?
The part of the eye that controls the amount of light that gets into the eye.
What is the Pupil?
The part of the eye that widens or dilates to let in more/less light.
What is the Retina?
Neural tissue lining the back of the eyeball’s interior, which contains the receptors (rods and cones) for vision. Initiates visual sensation and perception.
What are the parts of the Retina?
Rods and cones, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, fovea, and blind spot.
What are Rods?
Photoreceptor cells in the retina that begin the process of vision. Triggered by protons, they allow us to see colour and adapt to darkness. Each eye has 120-125 million rods, and are the reason why we can see in dim lighting. They take less protons to trigger than cones.
