Exam #2 PSY Flashcards
What is sensation?
The brain receives input from the sensory organs
What is perception?
The brain makes sense out of the input from sensory organs
What are the three steps basic to all sensory systems?
reception, transduction, and transmission
what is top down processing?
using models, ideas, and expectations to interpret sensory information
what us bottom up processing?
taking sensory information and then assembling and integrating it
What is an absolute threshold?
the minimum level of stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus half the time
What is priming?
an individual’s exposure to a certain stimulus influences their response to a subsequent prompt, without any awareness of the connection
What is sensory adaptation
to help detect novelty in our surroundings, our senses tune out a constant stimulus such as: a rock in your shoe
what determines brightness?
the perceived intensity or luminance of a visual stimulus
What determines color/hue?
the wavelength of light that reaches our eyes
what is the pupil?
the dark circular opening in the center of the eye
What are rods and cones? What is each responsible for? Which is more color sensitive?
Rods and cones are receptor cells, rods help us see the black and white actions in our peripheral view and in the dark. Cones help us see sharp colorful details in bright light. Cluster around the fovea. Cones are more sensitive
What is the opponent processing theory? Which cells are turned off by which cells?
refers to the neural process of perceiving white as the opposite of perceiving black
What is retinal disparity? What is it a cue for?
the two eyes have slightly different views. The more different the views are the closer the object must be. depth perception
What are monocular cues?
visual clues that allow a person to perceive depth using only one eye
what determines pitch
high frequency sound waves
What determines loudness?
higher amplitudes
What is on the basilar membrane?
the hair cells
What is place theory?
At high sound frequencies, signals are generated at different locations in the cochlea, depending on pitch. The brain reads pitch by reading the location where the signals are coming from
What do hair cells do?
They send signals through the auditory nerves to the temporal lobe of the brain
What is the definition of learning?
the process of acquiring new understanding
What is conditioning?
the process that teaches a person how to respond to a stimulus by associating a stimulus with a particular behavior
Generally, what are unconditioned responses?
a stimulus which triggers a response naturally without any conditioning