Introduction to Perception

Question 1

What is perception?

Answer 1

Conscious experience resulting from stimulation of the senses

Question 2

What is sensation?

Answer 2

Simple processes at the beginning of a sensory system and detecting elementary properties

Question 3

What are the steps of the perceptual process?

Answer 3

1. Stimulus in the environment (distal + proximal)
2. Light is reflected and focused
3. Receptor processes
4. Neural processing
5. Recognition
6. Action

Question 4

What is distal stimuli?

Answer 4

Something in the environment being observed

Question 5

What is proximal stimuli?

Answer 5

Representation of the stimuli on receptors

Question 6

What is the principle of transformation?

Answer 6

Stimuli and responses are transformed or changed between the distal stimulus and perception

Question 7

What is the principle of representation?

Answer 7

Perception is not based on direct contact with stimuli but rather everything we perceive is based on representations of the stimulus that are formed on receptors and the resulting activity in the nervous system

Question 8

What is the first transformation in the principle of transformation (vision)?

Answer 8

Light hits an object and is reflected into a person’s eyes

Question 9

What is the second transformation in the principle of transformation (vision)?

Answer 9

As light enters the eye, it is transformed as it is focused by the eye’s optical system which forms an image on the receptors of the retina

Question 10

What are sensory receptors?

Answer 10

Cells that respond to environmental energy

Question 11

What are receptor processes?

Answer 11

Receptors transform environmental energy into electrical energy
Receptors shape perception by the way they respond

Question 12

What is transduction?

Answer 12

Transforms energy in one form to another

Question 13

What is neural processing?

Answer 13

Transmits signals from receptors to the brain
Processes signals as they are transmitted

Question 14

What are behavioural responses?

Answer 14

Electrical signals are turned into conscious experience

Question 15

What is action?

Answer 15

Taking action towards a perceived object

Question 16

What is bottom-up processing?

Answer 16

processing based on stimuli reaching the receptors

Question 17

What is top-down processing?

Answer 17

Refers to processing based on knowledge

Question 18

What are the 3 types of relationships in perceptual processing?

Answer 18

Relationship A: stimulus-perception

Relationship B: stimulus-physiological

Relationship C: physiological-perception

Question 19

What is the oblique effect?

Answer 19

People can see vertical or horizontal lines better than lines oriented obliquely

Question 20

What is the stimulus-behaviour relationship and how is it studied (oblique effect?

Answer 20

Relates stimuli to behavioural responses
Studied using psychophysics - grating acuity for studying the oblique effect

Question 21

What is the stimulus-physiology relationship and how is it studied (oblique effect?

Answer 21

Relationship between stimuli and neural firing
Study by measuring brain activity - optical brain imaging, presenting lines in various orientations for oblique effect

Question 22

What is the physiology-behaviour relationship and how is it studied (oblique effect)?

Answer 22

Relates physiological responses and behavioural responses
Measure brain response and behavioural sensitivity in same subjects
-made by decreases the intensity difference of a grating until the subject could no longer detect the gratings orientation and fMRI is also used

Question 23

What are thresholds?

Answer 23

Measure the limits of sensory systems which are measures of minimums

Question 24

What is psychophysics?

Answer 24

The study of the relation between mental physical properties

Question 25

What is the method of limits?

Answer 25

The experimenter presents stimuli in either ascending or descending order until the threshold is reached

Question 26

What did classical psychosocial methods do?

Answer 26

Opened the way for the founding of scientific psychology by providing methods to measure an aspect of the mind

Question 27

What is the absolute threshold?

Answer 27

The smallest stimulus level that can just be detected

Question 28

What is the difference threshold?

Answer 28

The smallest difference between two stimuli that enables us to tell the difference between them

Question 29

What is the dark adaptation curve?

Answer 29

Shows how the threshold becomes smaller as the person spends more time in the dark

Question 30

What is the perceptual magnitude of a stimulus (technique)?

Answer 30

Magnitude estimation - present a stimulus and ask participants to assign a number that is proportional in other stimulus environments (2 lights double as bright?)

Question 31

What is the identity of the stimulus (technique)?

Answer 31

Recognition testing

Question 32

How quickly can I react to it (technique)

Answer 32

Reaction time

Question 33

How can I describe what is out there (technique)?

Answer 33

Phenomenological report
-describing what is out there

Hermann grid
-describing what you see

Question 34

How can I interact with it (technique)?

Answer 34

Physical tasks and judgements