Sensory Processes Vocabulary

Question 1

The tough, protective outer covering of the eye

Answer 1

Sclera

Question 2

The specialized part of the sclera at the front of the eye that allows light to pass into the eye. Produces most of the refraction used to focus an image

Answer 2

Cornea

Question 3

The pigmented layer that defines the pupil.

Answer 3

iris

Question 4

A hole in the iris that adjusts to admit only rays of light that can be focused. the size of this structure adjusts as you change your gaze among objects at different distances

Answer 4

Pupil

Question 5

An elastic structure behind the iris that also changes its properties in order to focus an image as you gaze among objects at different distance. Makes small adjustments to the amount of refraction

Answer 5

Lens

Question 6

the complex layer of neural tissue that covers the back of the eye. the surface where a focused image is formed so that we may see.

Answer 6

Retina

Question 7

the blur that necessarily results from different wavelengths of light refracting different amounts. Ameliorated for high acuity by concentrating on having a highly focused image in the fovea and by removing wavelengths that cannot be focused when the other wavelengths are focused. Light is removed by having pigment in the lens and in the area around the fovea to absorb the light. Removing ‘blue’ from white light yields the experience of yellow; the lens and fovea are tinted yellow.

Answer 7

chromatic aberration

Question 8

An innervation pattern that allows the activity in one cell to reduce (inhibit) the report rom neighboring (to the side – lateral) cells. This mututal interaction causes the report from the set of cells to accentuate differences (contrast) in their responses, which makes the identification of difference easier. this helps us see edges/borders, improving our ability to correctly perceive objects in the world.

Answer 8

Lateral inhibition

Question 9

The more brain given to an analysis, the better the analysis. the term given to the disproportional representation in cortex of some sensory input, yeiling great sensitivity and resolution in the analysis. In vision, the output of the fovea receives such preferential analysis. In the somatic senses, the hands and mouth are represented in much larger proportions in the parietal lobe homunculus that their size in the body.

Answer 9

cortical magnification

Question 10

A Twentieth Century school of psychology that focused on complete systems. It was particularly successful in its study of how the mind organized sensations into perceptions, forming something that may be greater that the sum of its parts. It arose in response to what it perceived as the great error of the behaviorist/empiricist approach.

Answer 10

Gestalt psychology

Question 11

The Gestalt psychologist studied two catefgories of rules for performing an interpretive analysis. One category describes how a person determines what features belong with each other to define an object (organization principles for the perception of form). the second describes properties (perceptual constancies) that we attribute to objects. The 6-month old infant has acquired both.

Answer 11

Gestalt principles

Question 12

According to Gestalt psychology, features that are alike will tend to be perceived to belong to a single form. May be based on any aspect of the stimulus: shape, color, motion, etc. will tend to yield a perceptual joining of the similar features

Answer 12

Similarity

Question 13

According to Gestalt psychology, features that are near each other will rend to be perceived to belong to a single form. By altering the space between features, we alter the perceptual organization.

Answer 13

Proximity

Question 14

According to Gestalt psychology, we interpret the sensory input from the world with the minimal complexity necessary. Even when we have observed manipulations that reveal the true complexity of a scene, our perception is always of minimal complexity.

Answer 14

Simplicity

Question 15

According to Gestalt psychology, the aspect of the object concept that states that the size of an object is not subject to rapid change. When the image on an object rapidly changes, this concept eliminates the possibility that the change in the image is due to a change in the object itself, leading to a perception of a change in the distance of the object.

Answer 15

Size constancy

Question 16

According to Gestalt psychology, the aspect of the object concept that states that the shape of an object is not subject to rapid change. When the image of an object rapidly changes, this concept eliminates the possibility that the change in the image is due to a change in the object itself, leading to a perception of a change in the orientation of the object or the interposition of another object obscuring the view of the original object.

Answer 16

Shape constancy

Question 17

Cells that are activated by specific characteristic in the environment.

Answer 17

Feature detectors

Question 18

A form of passive analysis that involves the simultaneous analysis of the possible existence of a wide array of features by different processors (parallel processing). The presence of a particular feature is indicated by a particular processing being highly activated by the stimulus (while other processors respond little or not at all).

Answer 18

Feature analysis

Question 19

Involves the active, inductive construction of a hypothesis about what would be happening in the world that would give rise to the features represented in the various sensory areas of the brain. An unconscious analysis of the information provided about the external world by the sensory systems in order to ‘take a guess’ as what things in the world actually are. This was recognized by von Helmholtz when he described perception as a process of ‘unconscious inference.”

Answer 19

Interpretive analysis

Question 20

Allow people to perceive depth relations with information available to a single eye. Interpreted as indicators of depth relaitons (active analysis), as opposed to retinal disparity, which, through the process of stereopsis, gives us a passive analysis perception of depth.

Answer 20

Pictorial cues

Question 21

A laboratory device, developed by Eleanor Gibson, for testing depth perception in infants and young animals. Gibson’s experiments proved that by the time they were old enough to crawl, infants had learned depth perception.

Answer 21

visual cliff

Question 22

This concept has three parts:

1. ) two eyes ‘see” different parts of the world 9each eye ‘sees’ across about 120 degrees, but they overlap only for 60 degrees)
2. ) even when viewing the same object, the views of the object are slightly different (the object is seen at slightly different angles)
3. ) the image of a single object generally falls in different locations in the two eyes.

Must exist to give us the psychological experience of feeling that we are present in a three dimensional world.

Answer 22

Binocular disparity

Question 23

A difference in the positions of the images on the two retinas

Answer 23

Retinal disparity

Question 24

Any factor that allows us to tell two lights apart in the absence of any characteristics such as the shape or texture (judging just the light themselves)

Answer 24

Light

Question 25

Three psychological dimensions of color:

Answer 25

Hue
saturation
brightness

Question 26

The psychological dimension characterized by the difference between red and green (what we usually mean by ‘color’).

Answer 26

Hue

Question 27

The psychological dimension characterized by the difference between red and pink (these may have the same hue and brightness, but are different colors)

Answer 27

Saturation

Question 28

The psychological dimension characterized by the intensity of the psychological experience, directly related to the amount of light.

Answer 28

Brightness

Question 29

the three-color coding system in which normal human color vision is mediated. We see the same color whenever these three systems respond in the same way, which can happen for lights that are very different in terms of their wavelength composition.

Answer 29

trichromacy

Question 30

Exist in our retinase to evaluate the response of one system compared to another

Answer 30

Opponent-process cell

Question 31

An egocentric (centered on the viewer) set of dimensions for representing the three-dimensional world

Answer 31

Azimuth, elevation and distance

Question 32

the angle, measured in a horizontal plane around the viewer, to the vertical plane that contains an object. Measured by the degrees that an object lies left or right of center

Answer 32

Azimuth

Question 33

The angle of the objet relative to the horizontal plane in which azimuth is measured. Indicates how ‘high’ or ‘low’ an object is relative to the viewer.

Answer 33

Elevation

Question 34

A general scheme in our sensory systems is to represent the place of a stimulus by the place of activity within the nervous system. In the visual system, different locations on the retina are mapped throughout the central nervous system by the location of different cells within a nucleus. Because different places in the world that are next to each other produce images on the retina in locations that are next to each other, this coding of location on the retina by locations in a nucleus (topus).

Answer 34

Spatiotopic mapping

Question 35

The intensity difference between two ears hearing the same sounds in different positions in space.

Answer 35

Interaural intensity difference

Question 36

The coding of time at which a sound arrives at one ear compared to the time it arrives at the other ear is uniquely related to the azimuth of the sound source

Answer 36

Interaural time difference

Question 37

The distortion of exact spectrum of a given sound as the sound moves around the pinna and down the ear canal is uniquely related to the azimuth and elevation of the sound source.

Answer 37

Pinna cues

Question 38

A ‘where’ analysis, the locations of objects in the worlds around us, is determined by the visual, auditory, and other sensory systems. These maps of space are aligned in a single representation of space derived from this multisensory analysis in the parietal lobe.

Answer 38

Dorsal tract

Question 39

A ‘what’ analysis, a determination of the form (identity) of an object, is performed by the visual, auditory, and other sensory systems. These analyses are combined in the inferior temporal lobe. Produces a single judgment of just what object is present.

Answer 39

Ventral tract

Question 40

Argues that inputs from more than one sensory modality are not treated equally, but that the modality with the most accurate analysis (higher sensitivity, greater resolution) is given more weight that less accurate inputs. Explains why vision dominates inputs from hearing and touch concerning analysis of space while hearing dominates judgments of time since vision has greater spatial ability while hearing provides a superior temporal analysis

Answer 40

Appropriateness account