Introduction to Perception Flashcards
What are the steps in the perceptual process?
- stimulus in the environment (distal stimuli)
- stimulus hits the receptors (proximal stimuli)
- receptor processes
- neural processing
5,6,7. perception, recognition, action
What is the perceptual process?
- seven steps, plus knowledge inside the person’s brain, describe the process of perception
- these steps occur between the time a person looks at the stimulus in the environment, perceives the stimulus, recognizes it, and takes action toward it
What is distal stimuli?
- environmental stimuli are all objects in the environment that are available to the observer
- observer selectively attends to objects
- stimulus impinges on receptors resulting in internal representation
- stimuli from the environment reach the sensory receptors
- information about object is carried by light
What are proximal stimuli?
- the representation of the distal stimulus on the receptors
- stimulus is in proximity to the receptors
- light is transformed when it is reflected from object, when it travels through the atmosphere and when it is focused on the eye’s optical system
- image on retina
What is transformation?
- When the stimuli and responses created by stimuli are transformed, or changed, between the environmental stimuli and perception
- first transformation occurs when light hits the object and is then reflected from the object to the person’s eyes
- as this reflected light enters the eye, it is transformed again as it is focused by the eye’s optical system onto the retina
What is representation?
- everything a person perceives is based not on direct contact with stimuli but on representations of stimuli that are formed on the receptors and the resulting activity in the person’s nervous system
What are receptor processes?
- Sensory receptors are cells specialized to respond to environmental energy
- each sensory system’s receptors specialized to respond to a specific type of energy
- Transduction occurs, which changes environmental energy to nerve impulses
- The end result is an electrical representation of the object
- when the sensory receptors receive the information from the environment: they transform environmental energy into electrical energy and they shape perception by the way they respond to different properties of the stimuli
What is transduction?
- the transformation of environmental energy to electrical energy
- allowing the information that is out there to be transformed into a form that can be understood by the brain
- sensory receptors are like a bridge between the external sensory world and internal (neural) representation of that world
What is neural processing?
- changes that occur as signals are transmitted through the maze of neurons
- sensory receptors travel through a vast interconnected network of neurons and transmit signals from the receptors to the brain and then within the brain and change or process these signals as they are transmitted
- some signals become reduced or are prevented from getting through and others are amplified so they can arrive at the brain with added strength
- the changes in these signals that occur as they are transmitted through this maze of neurons is neural processing
- the electrical signals created through transduction are sent to a sense’s primary receiving area (lobe)
- once signals reach the primary receiving areas, they are then transmitted to many other structures in the brain
What is the cerebral cortex?
- 2 mm
- creating perceptions, language, memory, emotions, and thinking
What are behavioural responses?
- perception, recognition and action
- electrical signals have been transformed into the conscious experience of perception which leads to recognition
- Person perceives object
- Person recognizes it
- Person reacts to it
What is visual form agnosia?
- an inability to recognize objects
What is knowledge?
- any information the perceiver brings to a situation
- prior experience or expectations
- can affect steps in the perceptual process
- ex: rat man demo
What is bottom up processing?
- Processing based on incoming stimuli from the environment, reaching the receptors
- data-based processing
What is top down processing?
- Processing based on the perceiver’s previous knowledge (cognitive factors)
- knowledge-based processing
- very involved in perception
- as stimuli become more complex, the role of top down processing increases
- our knowledge of how things usually appear in the environment, baed on our past experiences, can play an important role in determining what we perceive
How can we split the perceptual process into three major components?
- stimulus (distal and proximal)
- physiology (receptors and neural processing)
- behaviour (perception, recognition, action)
What is the stimulus-behaviour (perception) relationship?
- relates stimuli to behavioural responses
- study using psychophysics (measures relationship between physical and psychological)
- oblique test using grating acuity, (smallest width of line that can be detected - indicate correct orientation)
- the results show that acuity is best for gratings oriented vertically or horizontally
- the stimulus is oriented gratings, and the behavioural response is detecting the grating’s orientation
What is the oblique effect?
- people see vertical or horizontal lines better than lines obliquely
How can we study the perceptual process?
- by observing perceptual processes at different stages in the system
- the stimulus-behaviour (perception) relationship
- the stimulus-physiology relationship
- the physiology-behaviour (perception) relationship
What is the stimulus-physiology relationship?
- relationship between stimuli and physiological responses
- studied by measuring brain activity
- horizontal and vertical orientations caused larger brain responses in visual brain areas than oblique orientations
What is the physiology-behaviour (perception) relationship?
- relates physiological responses and behavioural responses
- Horizontal and vertical orientations result in better acuity (behavioural response) and more brain activation (physiological response) than oblique orientations
- When behavioural and physiological responses to stimuli are similar like this, researchers often infer the relationship between physiology and behaviour
- can measure the physiology–behaviour relationship directly
- measuring both the brain response and behavioural sensitivity in the same participants
- more sensitive to the horizontal and vertical orientations
- fMRI
- measurements showed larger brain responses to vertical and horizontal gratings than to oblique gratings
What is optical imaging?
- Electrical activity of neurons is related to local metabolic activity and blood flow
- Correlates of brain activity:
- Blood volume changes
- Blood oxygenation changes
- Light scattering changes caused by ion
and water movementH
How can we measure perception?
- absolute threshold
- difference threshold
What is the absolute threshold?
- the smallest stimulus level that can just be detected
- the smallest amount of energy needed to detect a stimulus
- thresholds measure the limits of sensory systems; they are measures of minimums—the smallest