Taste, Smell, Touch, Proprioception, Vestibular, Kinesthetic, & Attention

Question 0

Smell

Answer 0

Olfactory sensorireceotors are located in upper nasal passage of the nose called olfactory epithelium
Sensory information is sent directly to olfactory bulb in brain

Question 1

Taste

Answer 1

Chemical, taste buds located on papillae (bumps)

Taste information travels to localized “taste center” in thalamus

Question 2

Touch sensorireceotors

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Two-point thresholds

Answer 3

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

Question 4

Physiological zero

Answer 4

Temperature of the skin.

Question 5

Gate theory of pain

Answer 5

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

Question 6

Proprioception

Answer 6

General term for our sense of body position (includes vestibular and kinesthetic sense)

Question 7

Vestibular sense

Answer 7

Balance; inner ear

Question 8

Kinesthetic sense

Answer 8

Awareness of body movement and position, especially muscle, joint, and tendon position

Question 9

Selective attention

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Dichotic listening

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Yerkes-Dodson Law

Answer 11

Performance in maintaining attention is parabolic (worst at low and high levels of arousal; maximal at mid levels of arousal)