PSYC 100 Midterm: Ch. 7-9

Question 1

Sensation vs. Perception

Answer 1

Sensation - physical processes where our sensory organs (like tasing & hearing are involved)

Perception: psychological processes where we remember to identify a gas leak or when a song reminds you of something

Question 2

Transduction

Answer 2

convert physical energy like light into electrical energy so our brain can perceive around us

Question 3

Basic Principles of Sensation and Perception

Answer 3

1: Absolute Thresh-hold - requires a minimal sense of stimulation to be able to identify it

2: ability to detect two stimuli of different intensities; bigger stimuli require larger differences to be noticed

3: When an experience stimuli doesn’t change, we stop paying attention to it (ex. Top-down processing - we’ll skip over the second “the” because we are used to it)

Question 4

Three Types of Auditory Information

Answer 4

1: Amplitude (Intensity)
2: Pitch
3: Timbre

Question 5

Where does sound pass through?

Answer 5

PATOCA
- Pinna
- Auditory Canal
- Tympanic Membrane
- Ossicles
- Cochlea (sound waves convert to electric)
- Auditory Hair Cells

Question 6

Phantom Limb

Answer 6

having sensations like itching coming from a missing limb; caused by damaged nerves

Question 7

Smell and Taste

Answer 7

Chemical stimuli turned into electrical stimuli; odorants responds to the olfactory (smell) receptors and taste is related to the taste receptors

Question 8

Multimodal Perception

Answer 8

All Senses create a perceptual experience

Question 9

Superadditive of multi-sensory integration

Answer 9

respond stronger to multimodal stimuli and the sum of each modality together; able to understandable what someone is saying in a loud room based on visual cues

Question 10

Principle of inverse effectiveness

Answer 10

states that you are less likely to beneFIt from additional cues from other modalities if the initial unimodal stimulus is strong enough

Question 11

Normal Range of Frequencies

Answer 11

20Hz-20,000kHz

Question 12

Normal Range of Loudness

Answer 12

1-4kHz

Question 13

Spatial Hearing: Interaural time differences

Answer 13

sound source on the right reaches right ear slightly before it reaches the left ear

Question 14

Spatial Hearing: Interaural level differences

Answer 14

the head casts an acoustic “shadow,” so that when a sound is presented from the left, the sound level at the left ear is somewhat higher than the sound level at the right ear.

Question 15

Interoception

Answer 15

the perception of internal signals from the body (ex. being thirsty, stuffed nose, etc.)

Question 16

Exteroception

Answer 16

the sense of the external world (stimulation originates from outside)

Question 17

Touch and pain information is sent to the central nervous system through:

Answer 17

Cutaneous senses: senses of the skin (tactile, thermal, pruritic/itch, painful/pleasant)
Proprioception: body position
Kinesthesis: body movement
Nociception: pain/discomfort

Question 18

Three types of receptors for touch:

Answer 18

1: Mechanoreceptors: respond to mechanical stimuli (stroking, stretching, vibration)
2: Thermoreceptors: respond to cold/hot temperatures
3: Chemoreceptors: respond to certain types of chemicals (external/within skin)

Question 19

Descending pain modulatory system

Answer 19

top-down pain-modulating system capable of inhibiting pain-signaling so that more important actions can be attended to

Question 20

Cornea

Answer 20

clear covering that protects the eye and begins to focus the incoming light

Question 21

Pupil

Answer 21

opening in centre of the eye; dark circle part

Question 22

Iris

Answer 22

the coloured part of the eye that controls the size of the pupil by constricting or dilating in response to light intensity

Question 23

Lens

Answer 23

a structure that focuses the incoming light on the retina

Question 24

Retina

Answer 24

tissue at the back that has the photoreceptor cells

Question 25

Rods

Answer 25

work in dimmer light, see in black white and grey,

Question 26

Cones

Answer 26

bright light and colours, wavelengths

Question 27

Opponent Process Colour Theory

Answer 27

we analyze sensory information not in terms of three colours, but rather in three sets of “opponent colours”: red-green, yellow-blue, and white-black

Question 28

Optic Nerves

Answer 28

a bunch of neurons that send visual information to the brain (how we detect colours)

Question 29

Depth Perception

Answer 29

the ability to perceive 3D space and judge distance accurately; depth cues -created by retinal image disparity – space between our eyes, and requires the coordination of both eyes

Question 30

Beta effect

Answer 30

the perception of motion that occurs when different images are presented next to each other in succession

Question 31

Phi phenomenon

Answer 31

we perceive a sensation of motion caused by the appearance and disappearance of objects that are near each other

Question 32

receptive field

Answer 32

All over the brain, neurons can be found that respond only to stimuli presented in specific regions of the space surrounding the perceiver

Question 33

Multisensory convergence zones

Answer 33

regions in the brain that receive input from the multiple unimodal areas processing different sensory modalities

Question 34

McGurk effect

Answer 34

effect in which conflicting visual and auditory components of a speech stimulus result in an illusory percept

Question 35

“The Ventriloquism effect”

Answer 35

It’s difficult to pinpoint the location of the sounds

Question 36

Double flash illusion

Answer 36

the false perception of two visual flashes when a single flash is accompanied by two auditory beeps

Question 37

Perception of collisions between two circles

Answer 37

the tendency to perceive two circles as bouncing off each other if the moment of their contact is accompanied by an auditory stimulus

Question 38

Consciousness

Answer 38

first person perspective of mental event, awareness to have conscious experiences

Question 39

Dualism

Answer 39

mental and physical are different substances

Question 40

Reductionism

Answer 40

mental phenomena can be explained via descriptions of physical phenomena

Question 41

Cortical blindness

Answer 41

damage to primary visual cortex causes loss of sight
Still has some visual ability, as far as it doesn’t require conscious experiences of the stimuli (e.g., being asked whether an object moved right/left instead of being asked whether it moved)

Question 42

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory of Consciousness

Answer 42

sharing of information among prefrontal, inferior parietal, and occipital regions of the cerebral cortex is postulated to be especially important for generating awareness

Question 42

Conscious Memory

Answer 42

episodic recollection;