Second test Flashcards
What is sensation?
the process of receiving, translating and transmitting raw sensory data from the external and internal environments to the brain
What is perception?
the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting sensory data into useful mental representation of the world
What is processing?
each sensory organ contains receptors, which receive sensory information from the environment
What is transduction?
through these receptors convert the sensory stimuli into neutral impulses, which are sent on to the brain
What is thresholding?
testing the limits and changes
What’s the absolute threshold?
smallest amount of a stimulus we can detect
What’s the difference threshold?
smallest change in a stimulus we can detect
What’s sensory adaption?
decreased sensory response to continuous stimulation
What is light?
form of electromagnetic energy that moves in waves
Light waves vary in:
- Length (wave length) -> determines frequency (colour)
- Height (amplitude) -> determines intensity
- Range (length + height) -> determines complexity
What’s the function of the eye?
captures light and focuses it on receptors at the back of the eyeball
What are the five senses?
- Vision
- Hearing
- Smell
- Taste
- Touch
What are the receptors for vision?
rods and cones in the retina
What is sound?
Sound results from movement of air molecules in a particular wave pattern
Sound waves vary in:
- length (wave length) -> determines pitch
- height (amplitude) -> determines loudness
- range (mixture) -> determines timbre
What are the receptors for hearing?
hair cells in the cochlea
What’s the proper name for the sense of smell?
olfaction
What are the receptors for smell?
embedded in a nasal membrane called olfactory epithelium
what are characteristics of smell?
- Can detect more than 10 000 different smells
- Women generally possess a stronger sense of smell than men
- People seem to have the ability to identify gender by smell
- Smell can evoke memories
What’s the proper name for the sense of taste?
gustation
What are the receptors for taste?
taste buds in papillae on the surface of the tongue
What are the three body senses?
- Skin senses
- Vestibular sense
- Kinesthesia
What are the skin senses?
- where you feel touch, temperature and pain
- receptors are in various concentrations and depths of the skin
What’s the vestibular sense?
- sense of balance
- involves vestibular sacs and semicircular canals located in the inner ear
What’s kinaesthesia?
- provides brain with info about the body posture and body movement
- found throughout the muscles, joints and tendons of the body
What interprets stimuli?
perception
What detects stimuli?
sensation
What are the three basic processes of perception?
- selection
- organization
- interpretation
What are the three different types of selection?
- Selective attention
- Feature detectors
- Habituation
What’s selective attention?
filtering out and attending only to important sensory messages
What are feature detectors?
specialized neutrons responding only to certain sensory information
What is habituation?
the brain’s tendency to ignore environmental factors that remain constant
What are the different types of organizing?
- Form perception
- Perceptual constancy
- Depth perception
- Color perception
What’s perceptual adaption?
the brain adapts to changed environments
What’s perceptual set?
readiness to perceive in a particular manner, based on expectations
What’s frame of reference?
based on the context of the situation
What’s bottom-up/top-down processing?
information either starts with raw sensory data or with thoughts, expectations and knowledge
What’s extrasensory perception?
the supposed ability to perceive things that go beyond the five normal senses
What’s the opponent-process theory?
colour perception results from three systems of colour opposites
What’s the trichromatic theory?
colour perception results from mixing three distinct colour systems
What’s the different components of the gestalt theory?
- Figure
- Ground
- Closure
- Similarity
What are the different monocular cues?
- Linear perspective
- Interposition
- Relative size
- Texture gradient
- Aerial perspective
What’s the acronym for the five factor model?
Openness -> original and imaginative to conventional and down to earth
Conscientiousness -> responsible and organized to irresponsible and lazy
Extroversion -> talkative and outgoing to quiet and passive
Agreeableness -> trusting and good-natured to suspicious and ruthless
Neuroticism -> worried and moody to calm and even-tempered
What are the psychosexual stages of development
- Oral stage: birth to 18 months
- Anal stage: 18 months to 3yrs
- Phallic stage: 3 to 6yrs
- Latency stage: 6yrs to puberty
- Genital stage: puberty to adulthood
