Sensation and Perception Flashcards
What is the process by which sense organs gather information about the environment and transmit it to the brain for initial processing.
Sensation
What is the process by which the brain selects, organises and interprets sensations?
Perception
What is the term for the ability to recognise object under different viewing conditions e.g lighting, viewpoint?
Perceptual constancy
What is the theory that measures the ability to distinguish between information-bearing patterns and ‘noise’ that distracts from the information, and threshold influencing factors such as experience, expectations, and physiological state?
Signal Detection Theory
What are the five senses?
- Audition (Hearing)
- Vision (Seeing)
- Olfaction (Smell)
- Gustation (Taste)
- Touch, Kinesthesis, Equilibrium
What is the process of converting stimulus information into neural impulses?
Transduction
The ______________ is the minimum amount of energy needed for an observer to sense that a stimulus is present.
Absolute threshold
The _______________ is the lowest level of stimulation required to sense that a change in stimulation has occurred.
Difference threshold
________________ is the tendency of sensory systems to respond less to stimuli that continue without change.
Sensory adaptation
____________________ is the tendency to perceive information outside our conscious awareness.
Subliminal perception
What are the four aspects of perceptual organisation?
Form perception, depth or distance perception, motion perception and perceptual constancy.
________________ involves generating meaning from sensory experience.
Perceptual interpretation
_________________ lies at the intersection of sensation and memory, as the brain interprets current sensations in the light of past experience.
Perceptual interpretation
What is the process that emphasises the role of sensory data in shaping perception?
Bottom-up processing
What is the process that emphasises the influence of prior experience on perception?
Top-down processing
All sensory systems have specialised cells called _______________ that respond to environmental stimuli which generate action potentials in adjacent sensory neurons.
Sensory receptors
According to ________________ theory, sensation is not a passive process that occurs when the amount of stimulation exceeds a critical threshold; rather, experiencing a sensation means making a judgement about whether a stimulus is present or absent.
Signal detection
____________ is the tendency of sensory receptors to respond less to stimuli that continue without change.
Sensory adaptation
_____________ is the tendency to perceive information outside our conscious awareness.
Subliminal perception
According to this law - a second stimulus must differ by a constant proportion from the first for it to be perceived as different, regardless of the magnitude of two stimuli.
Weber’s law
According to this law, the magnitude of a stimulus grows logarithmically as the subjective experience of intensity grows arithmetically so that people subjectively experience only a fraction of actual increases in stimulation.
Fechner’s law
According to ________________ law, subjective intensity increases in a linear fashion as actual intensity grows exponentially.
Stevens’ power law
The retina contains two types of light receptors, or photoreceptors called __________________ which were named for their distinctive shapes.
Rods and Cones
What cells are stimulated by the Retina?
Bipolar cells
What cells integrate the information from multiple Bipolarcells?
Ganglion cells
Ganglion cell axons bundle together to form the ___________, which carries visual information to the brain.
optic nerve
What is the fovea?
The central region of the retina, that is most sensitive to small detail, meaning vision is sharpest for stimuli directly in sight.
Why do humans have a blind spot?
The blind spot (or optic disk) occurs at the point on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye, and has no receptor cells.
Retinal cells that ‘see’ colour?
Cones
Retinal cells that ‘see’ black, white and grey?
Rods
From the optic nerve, visual information travels along which two pathways, to the visual cortex.
- Superior colliculus (in the midbrain)
- Lateral geniculate nucleus (in the thalamus)
Which visual neural pathways in humans is particularly involved in eye movements.
Superior colliculus in the midbrain
What is blind sight?
Blind sight is where there may be damage to one of the neural pathways, but the brain still receives some of the visual input signal, so an individual may be unaware of their ability to see. However, they can still describe part of t=what they have ‘seen’
Beyond the primary visual cortex, visual information flows along two pathways, name them.
The ‘what’ pathway (involved in determining what an object is) and the ‘where’ pathway (involved in locating the object in space, following its movement and guiding movement towards it).
__________________ in the primary visual cortex respond only when stimulation in their receptive field matches a particular pattern or orientation.
Feature detectors.
What is the phenomenon where an individual’s Feaure detectors fail, causing face blindness?
Prosopagnosia
Which two theories explain what is known about colour vision?
- Trichromatic, theory - three types of retinal receptors, sensitive to wavelengths experienced as red, green or blue.
- Opponent-process theory - blue–yellow, red–green and black–white system, explains after images.
