Sensation & Perception Definitions Flashcards
Sensation
raw data in the world that you are perceiving.
Perception
How we interpret raw data.
Sensory Receptors
Each basic senses have their own particular sensory neuron.
Sensory Receptor: Vision
Photo Receptors
Sensory Receptor: Olfaction & Taste
Chemoreceptors
Sensory Receptor: Audition & Touch
Thermoreceptors, Mechanoreceptors
Absolute Threshold
The minimum amount of stimulation to detect the sense.
Sensory Adaptation
Your receptors stop responding to a constant stimulus. Your touch receptors are being activated for so long that you become adapt to it.
Difference Threshold: Just Noticeable Difference
Smallest difference required to tell one stimulus from another 50% of the time.
Ex. Advertisements
Subliminal Perception (4 points)
When things occur just below our level of awareness. Always talking about it in reference to advertising. Only been shown to work in laboratory settings. Things that are hidden that cannot be perceived then influences subliminal behavior.
Vision: Properties of Light (4 points)
-Light = energy
-Light is a wave
-Wavelength = color
-Amplitude = Brightness of that color
Wavelength colors
-The smallest wavelength is violet (400nm) and the largest is Red 665nm)
Eyenatomy: Cornea
Outer membrane that covers the eyeball, also helps to bend light.
Eyenatomy: Pupil
Opening of the eye and determines how might light goes into the eye.
Eyenatomy: Iris
Where you have the color of your eyes.
Eyenatomy: Lens
Job is to bend and refract light to the back of the eye.
Eyenatomy: Sclera
White part of your eye
Eyenatomy: Vitreous Humor
to maintain the shape of the eye
Eyenatomy: Retinal Layer
Where the photoreceptors are.
Eyenatomy: Fovea
Your best acuity. If you’re looking at something and is your clear vision, it is focusing it right on the fovea.
Eyenatomy: Optic Nerve
All of the axons from the photoreceptors bundle together to become the optic nerve.
Rods
they look like rods, the only look at shapes.
Cones
responsible for color vision and takes red, yellow, and blue wavelengths.
Retinal Distribution of Photoreceptors: Center of Retinal/ Fovea (2 points)
-Few rods, high concentration of cones
-Greatest visual acuity
Retinal Distribution of Photoreceptors:
Peripheral Retina (2 points)
-High concentration of rods
-Low visual acuity.
Retinal Distribution of Photoreceptors: Blind Spot (2 points)
-Contains no photoreceptors
-Where the optic nerve leaves the eye
Optic Chiasm
Optic Nerve -> Optic Chiasm -> Thalamus -> Occipital Lobe
Optic Nerve
The optic nerve leaves the eye and extends to a structure called the optic chiasm. The optic nerve fibers carrying information from the sides of the retina closest to the nose cross over to the other side of the brain. After leaving the optic chiasm, most of the nerve fibers end in the thalamus, and from there, the information will be passed on to the visual cortex.
Thalamus
Sensory switchboard
Color Vision: Trichromatic Theory (4 points)
-S-Cones: responses of Short-wavelength cones.
-M-cones: response of medium wavelength cones.
-L-cones: response to long-wavelength cones.
-Helps break down the ability to understand color.
Opponent-Process Theory
Hering proposed that we process four primary colors combined in pairs of
-Reddish-green, yellowish-blue, blackish-white,
Somatosensation
Nociception < brings in pain.
-Temperature
-Touch
-Certain areas like your hands and face has so many sensory neurons.
-The more sensory receptors, the more space it takes up in the brain.
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Sensory Systems: Audition (4 points)
-Can hear frequencies that go from 20 to 20,000 Hz
-Liquid inside ear makes waves.
-Hair cells move the liquid.
-Hair cells are what is turning those waves into an electrical signal.
Chemosenses: Smell & Taste
-Cen either bring in Orfo nasally and retro nasally
-Olfactory sensory neurons: regenerate after 30 days.
-Sense of smell is how you get flavor.
-Ofaction is linked to our memory and emotions.
Chemosenses: Taste
Can taste sweet, sour, salt, bitter, umami, does not tell us the different flavors, our nose tells us that.
-Beyond the 5 senses: Proprioception
Ability to sense movement, action, and location of limbs.
Kinesthesis
Involving your muscles
Vestibular
Sense of equilibrium and body position
-Connected in the ear
-Vestibular canal sends signals to balance, so if you have an ear infection, you can lose your balance.
Perception: Bottom-up processing
-First time information, we are taking what we have without any prior knowledge.
Perception: Top-Down Processing
Influenced by prior learning, experience, and expectations.
Gestalt Principles: Figure-ground Relationship
In order for us to figure out what we’re looking at, we need to see a figure and ground.
Gestalt Principles: Proximity
We group closer together elements, separating them from those farther apart.
Gestalt Principles: Similarity
As humans, we like to group things.
Gestalt Principles: Closure
-We prefer complete shapes so we will fill the gaps to make an image.
-Instead of seeing things as brackets, we’ll see a box.
Gestalt Principles: Continuity
We group elements that seem to follow a continuous path in a particular direction.
Perceptual Constancies
Our tendency to perceive objects as stable/unchanging despite changing sensory information.
-Size
-Shape
-Color
-Brightness
Depth Perception
-allows you to see the world in three dimensions.
Monocular cues:
-Relative size
-Aerial Perspective
-Occlusion
-Linear Perspective
-Texture Gradient
-Shadowing
-Motion Parallax
Stereopsis
the ability of both eyes to see the same object as one image and to create a perception of depth.
Binocular Cues: Retinal Disparity
What your left retina sees is completely different from what your right retina sees.
Binocular Cues: Convergence
telling you something is close.
Binocular Cues: Diverge
telling you something is far away.
Multimodal Perception
Information from one sense has the potential to influence how we perceive information from another.
Ex. Go to the club and cannot hear them so you look at their lips.
Principle of inverse effectiveness
You do not need other multisensory information
Psychological Factors Involved
Multimodal Perception cam also influence how you are taking in certain stimuli and perceiving it.
Emotional State
Taking in different perceptions based on your emotional state
Motivation Level
Homework seems hard but you’re just not motivated to do it.
Context
Context of situation can influence how you respond.
Culture/Experience
Have an experience that is not the same as other people’s experience.
Selective Attention
Attention is shiftable when it comes to stimuli that is novel, large, vivid, colored, moving, etc.
Cocktail Party Effect
To listen to one person against others of a group of people talking.
Inattentional Blindness
Failure to detect something when engaged in a task.
