Sensory and Cognition Flashcards
Sensation
The process of information integration in the brain
Perception
The interpretation of information in your brain
Two Major Camps: Constructivists and Nativists
Construct = perception is molded through life experiences including culture
Nativists = use of existing hardware fosters perceptual development
Children: Vision
Working, in color, moving into form perception etc, facial recognition at 2-3 months: sensitive periods whereby if something doesn’t happen, it impedes development
Children: Hearing
Working, not quite as developed as older children but up and running, parents
Children: Speech
Early differences, phonemes = basic sounds
Further Development
Physical abilities characterized into gross and fine motor skills (grasping/pincer)
Attention
As we age, attention increases: roughly 2 minutes for every year of age until 20s
In Adolescents: Hearing
optimal but…cultural implications, tinnitus, etc
In Adolescents: Vision
up to optimal
In Adolescents: Taste
growing and can become acquired
In Adolescents: Smell
yikes-but not an issue for everyone
Adults: Taste
Supertasters
Adults: Vision and Perception
In Older Adults
General decline-that’s life
- Vision, hearing, smell, touch, and taste all slip a bit
Affordances
In Eleanor and James Gibson’s ecological theory of perception, characteristics of an object that reveal what it has to offer humans and how it might be used by them.
Visual Acuity
The ability to perceive detail in a visual stimulus.
Visual Accomdation
The ability of the lens of the eye to change shape to bring objects at different distances into focus.
Habituation
A simple form of learning that involves learning not to respond to a repeated stimulus; learning to be bored by the familiar.
Form Perception
In visual perception, recognition of the patterns that constitute an object.
Contour
The amount of light-dark transition or boundary area in a visual stimulus.
Size Constancy
The tendency to perceive an object as the same size despite changes in its distance from the eyes.
Visual Cliff
An elevated glass platform that creates an illusion of depth and is used to test the depth perception of infants.
Intuitive theories
Organized systems of knowledge, believed to be innate, that allow children to make sense of the world in areas such as physics and psychology.
Phoneme
One of the basic units of sound used in a particular spoken language.
Evoked Potentials
Electrical activity in the brain, as measured through electrodes attached to the surface of the skull, in response to various stimuli; used to study infant perception.
Cochlear Implant
A surgically implanted amplification device that stimulates the auditory nerve to provide the sensation of hearing to a deaf individual.
Olfaction
The sense of smell, made possible by sensory receptors in the nasal passage that react to chemical molecules in the air
Somaesthetic senses
Body senses, including the senses of touch, temperature, and pain, as well as the kinesthetic sense of where one’s body parts are in relation to other body parts and to the environment.
Sensitive Period
As compared to a critical period, a period of life during which the developing individual is especially susceptible to the effects of experience or has an especially high level of plasticity.
Cataract
A pathologic condition of the eye involving opacification (clouding) of the lens that can impair vision or cause blindness
The sleeper effect
The delayed effect of an earlier experience, for example, the effect of early deprivation of visual stimulation.
Gross motor skills
Skills that involve large muscles and whole-body or limb movements (e.g., kicking the legs or drawing large circles). Contrast with fine motor skills.
Fine motor skills
Skills that involve precise movements of the hands and fingers or feet and toes. Contrast with gross motor skills
Ulnar grasp
Holding objects by clamping them between the palm of the hand and the fingers.
Pincer grasp
A grasp in which the thumb is used in opposition to the fingers, enabling an infant to become more dexterous at lifting and manipulating objects.
Dynamic systems theory
A perspective on development that, when applied to motor development, proposes that more sophisticated patterns of motor behavior emerge over time through a “self-organizing” process in which children modify their motor behavior in adaptive ways on the basis of the sensory feedback they receive when they try different movements.
Cross-modal perception
The ability to use one sensory modality to identify a stimulus or a pattern of stimuli already familiar through another modality.
Attention
Focusing perception and cognition on something in particular.
Orienting system
An attentional system that reacts to events in the environment;
Focusing system
Attentional system that deliberately seeks out and maintains attention to events.
Selective attention
Deliberately concentrating on one thing and ignoring something else.
Multitasking
Attending to and performing two or more tasks at the same time.
Tinnitus
Condition caused by exposure to high noise levels that involves ringing sounds in one or both ears and that can last for days, weeks, or indefinitely.
Sensory threshold
The point at which low levels of stimulation can be detected.
age-related macular degeneration
Damage to cells in the retina responsible for central vision.
Presbycusis
Problems of the aging ear, which commonly involve loss of sensitivity to highfrequency or high-pitched sounds.
