Chapter 6: Sensation and Perception Flashcards
The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Sensation
Sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli.
Sensory Receptors
The process by which our brain organises and interprets sensory information enabling us to recognize objects and events as meaningful.
Perception
Information processing that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.
Bottom-up Processing
Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Top-down Processing
Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret.
Transduction
The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.
Psychophysics
The minimum stimulus energy energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.
Absolute Threshold
A theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person’s experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness.
Signal Detection Theory
Below one’s absolute threshold of conscious awareness.
Subliminal
the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time. We experience the ___________ as a just noticeable difference.
Difference Threshold
The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount).
Weber’s Law
The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.
Priming
Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
Sensory Adaptation
A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
Perceptual Set
The distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next. Electromagnetic wavelengths vary from the short blips of gamma rays to the long pulses of radio transmission.
Wavelength
The dimension of colour that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the colour names; blue, green, etc.
Hue
The amount of energy in a light wave or sound wave, which influences what we perceive as brightness or loudness. ________ is determined by the wave’s amplitude (height).
Intensity
The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information.
Retina
The process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina.
Accommodation
Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and grey, and are sensitive to movement. ______ are necessary for peripheral and twilight vision: when cones don’t respond.
Rods
Retinal receptors that are concentrated near the centre of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. _______ detect fine detail and give rise to colour sensations.
Cones
The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.
Optic Nerve
The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a “blind” spot because no receptor cells are located there.
Blind Spot
The central focal point in the retina, around which the eye’s cones cluster.
Fovea
The theory that the retina contains three different types of colour receptors—one most sensitive to red, one to green, and one to blue—which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any colour.
Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory
The theory that opposing retinal processes enable colour vision. For example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhabited by red; others are stimulated by red and inhabited by green.
Opponent Process Theory
Nerve cells in the brain’s visual cortex that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.
Feature Detector
Processing many aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously. Scene → Retinal Processing → Feature Detection → Parallel Processing → Recognition
Parallel Processing
An organised whole, _______ psychologists emphasised our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
Gestalt
The organisation of the visual field into objects (______) that stand out from their surroundings (______).
Figure-ground
The perceptual tendency to organise stimuli into coherent groups.
Grouping
The ability to see objects in three dimensions, although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional.
Depth Perception
A laboratory device for testing the depth perception in infants and young animals.
Visual Cliff
A depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes.
Binocular Cue
A binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, that brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
Retinal Disparity
A depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
Monocular Cue
An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.
Phi Phenomenon
Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent colour, brightness, shape and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.
Perceptual Constancy
The ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.
Perceptual Adaptation
The sense or act of hearing.
Audition
The number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time (ex. Per seconds).
Frequency
A tone’s experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency.
Pitch
The chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones—hammer, anvil, and stirrup—that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea’s oval window.
Middle Ear
A coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves travelling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses.
Cochlea
The innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircle canals, and vestibular sacs.
Inner Ear
The most common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerve; also called nerve deafness.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss
A less common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
Conduction Hearing Loss
A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.
Cochlear Implant
In hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated (also called place coding).
Place Theory
In hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses travelling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch (also called temporal coding).
Frequency Hearing
The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The “gate” is opened by the activity of pain signals travelling up small nerve fibres and is closed by activity in larger fibres or by information coming from the brain.
Gate-control Theory
A social interaction in which one person suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviours will spontaneously occur.
Hypnosis
A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviours to occur simultaneously with others.
Dissociation
A suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotised; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviours.
Posthypnotic Suggestion
Our sense of taste.
Gustation
Our sense of smell.
Olfaction
Our movement sense—our system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.
Kinesthesia
Our balance sense—our sense of body movement and position that enables our sense of balance.
Vestibular Sense
The principle that one sense can influence another, as when the smell of sood influences its taste.
Sensory Interaction
The influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgements.
Embodied Cognition
The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
Extrasensory Perception
The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis (also called telekinesis).
Parapsychology
