Taste, Smell, Touch, Proprioception, Vestibular, Kinesthetic, & Attention Flashcards
Smell
Olfactory sensorireceotors are located in upper nasal passage of the nose called olfactory epithelium
Sensory information is sent directly to olfactory bulb in brain
Taste
Chemical, taste buds located on papillae (bumps)
Taste information travels to localized “taste center” in thalamus
Touch sensorireceotors
Pacinian corpuscles (deep pressure), Meissner corpuscles (touch), Merkle discs (pressure and texture), Ruffini endings (warmth), and fee nerve endings (most common) Send information to somatosensory cortex in parietal lobe
Two-point thresholds
Minimum distance necessary between two points of stimulation to be felt as two distinct stimuli
The distance depends on the density of nerve in the particular areas of skin
Physiological zero
Temperature of the skin.
Gate theory of pain
Authored by Melzach and Wall. Proposed a “gating” mechanism that can turn pain signals on or off, thus affecting whether we perceive pain or not
Proprioception
General term for our sense of body position (includes vestibular and kinesthetic sense)
Vestibular sense
Balance; inner ear
Kinesthetic sense
Awareness of body movement and position, especially muscle, joint, and tendon position
Selective attention
Acts as a filter between sensory stimuli and processing systems.
According to Donald Broadbent, all-or-nothing process (can only attend to one incoming stimulus at a time); more recent research indicates it doesn’t work that way.
Ancillary stimuli are dampened
Dichotic listening
Technique used by psychologists to study selective attention in a lab setting:
The two ears are presented with two different messages and the participant is asked to repeat one of the messages as it is presented; indicates that listeners can attend to one message and dampen the other
Yerkes-Dodson Law
Performance in maintaining attention is parabolic (worst at low and high levels of arousal; maximal at mid levels of arousal)