Sensation and Perception Flashcards
What is sensation?
Sensation is the reception (detecting), organisation (encoding as neural signals) and electrochemical transformation (impulse interpreted by the brain) of sensory energy to the brain.
What is perception?
Perception is our brain making sense of the information that we are gathering. Eg. Babies experience sensations however they do not have perception (depth perception).
Perception depends a lot on attention, we cannot focus on all stimuli simultaneously we have to select and focus on them individually (eg. music/convos at a party).
What is psychophysics?
The study of the relationship between the physical energy we detect and its effects on our psychological experiences.
The study of sensation and perception.
Distal vs. Proximal
Distal-Distance
Proximal- Within close proximity
How do we percieve information from the outside world?
Sensory systems convert stimulus information into neural impulses which the brain can then understand.
Therefore the intensity of a stimulus is measured as the number of neurons firing and rate at which they fire.
There are lots of stimuli within our environment that we don’t percept due to it being undetectable. We perceive what is important for our survival (we cannot see x-rays etc). Other animals have greater perception.
What is bottom-up processing?
The analysis of raw individual sensory information.
What is top-down processing?
Using prior knowledge/schemers to influence the interpretation of incoming stimuli.
What are the principles of gestalt psychology (perceptual organisation)
- Form perception- identifying the image in the foreground vs background
- Grouping principles- organising things by particular rules (proximity, similarity, closure, continuity & connectedness)
- Depth perception- images formed on the retina is 2D but we are able to percieve 3D. We have monocular & binocular depth cues
- Perceptual constancy- seeing environment as constant despite changes eg. size, colour, & brightness constancy
What are the Principles of perceptual organization and cues in pattern recognition?
Principles of perceptual organization and cues in pattern recognition are essential elements in understanding how the human brain organizes and interprets sensory information. These principles guide the grouping of individual elements into meaningful patterns.
What is a perceptual set?
The mental predisposition to percieve one thing and not the other.
Stimulus & Sensory receptors
Onenote
D.P.I
What are the 3 sensory detection modalities?
Distal sense modalitites- Changes in the environment far away eg. food cooking in neighbour’s kitchen
Proximal sense modalities- Changes in the immediate environment eg. handshake
Internal sense modalities- Changes that occur within us
What is the Stroop (interfere) effect?
The act of reading stops you from perceptually distinguishing stuff like naming colour (Stating the colour without stating the word instead.
What are thresholds?
The dividing line between what is detectable energy and what isn’t
Absolute threshold vs. Signal Detection
Absolute threshold is the minimal amount of energy required in order for us to detect a stimulus 50% of the time whereas signal detection theory argues that there is no single threshold and that one’s ability to pick up on a stimulus is based on their personal experiences, alertness etc.
