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EXAM PSYCH101 > Topic 5 Sensation and perception > Flashcards

Topic 5 Sensation and perception Flashcards

1
Q

What is sensation?

A

Process by which sense organs gather information and transmit it to the brain.

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2
Q

What is an environmental stimulus?

A

A form of energy capable of exciting the nervous system.

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3
Q

What is perception?

A

Process by which the brain selects, organizes, and interprets sensations.

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4
Q

What is the first principle of sensation and perception?

A

No one-to-one correspondence between physical and psychological reality.

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5
Q

What is the second principle of sensation and perception?

A

Sensation and perception are active, not passive.

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6
Q

What is the third principle of sensation and perception?

A

Sensation and perception are adaptive. Reflect the impact of adaptive pressures.

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7
Q

What begins the process of sensation?

A

An environmental stimulus.

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8
Q

What do people mostly selectively focus on?

A

Selectively focus our consciousness on parts of the environment that are particularly relevant to our needs and goals.

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9
Q

What is psychophysics?

A

Studies the relationship between attributes of the physical world and our psychological experience of them.

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10
Q

What are the main requirements for sensing the environment?

A
  1. Transduction.
  2. Thresholds
  3. Decision making
  4. Detection of changes in stim
  5. Turning down volume on irrelevant
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11
Q

What is transduction?

A

Converting physical energy or stimulus information into neural impulses.

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12
Q

What are the two qualities the brain codes for each sensory modality?

A

Intensity (number and freq of neurons that fire. Quality (colour, pitch taste).

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13
Q

What are sensory receptors?

A

Specialised cells in the nervous system which transform energy in the environment into neural impulses

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14
Q

What is absolute threshold?

A

Minimum amount of physical energy needed to notice a stimulus.

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15
Q

What is the percentage of absolute threshold?

A

Level of stimulation necessary for the person to detect it about 50 percent of the time.

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16
Q

What conditions can affect the threshold which a person can sense low levels?

A

Expectations, motivation, stress and level of fatigue.

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17
Q

What is noise?

A

Refers to irrelevant, distracting information, some external, some internal (neurons firing).

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18
Q

What is signal detection theory?

A

People judge whether a stimulus is present or absent.

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19
Q

What are the two processes at work in signal detection?

A

Initial sensory process, (the observer’s sensitivity to stimulus). Decision process, (observer’s response bias).

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20
Q

What is response bias/decision criterion?

A

The individual’s readiness to report detecting a stimulus when uncertain.

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21
Q

What are the two types of errors in signal detection errors?

A

False alarm or a miss or two kinds of correct = a hit (reporting stimulus) or a correct negative (no stimulus).

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22
Q

What affects the accuracy of signal detection?

A
  • Accuracy involves a trade-off between sensitivity to stim and vulnerability to reporting.
  • Observer who overreports sensations = high hits + high false alarms.
  • Observer who underreports = low hits + low false alarms.
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23
Q

What are two factors that affect response bias?

A

Expectations. Motivation.

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24
Q

What is the difference threshold?

A

Lowest level of stimulation required to sense a change in stimulation.

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25
Q

What is the jnd?

A

Just noticeable difference (jnd). The more intense the existing stimulus, the larger the change must be to be noticeable.

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26
Q

What does Weber’s law state?

A

Second stimulus must differ by a constant proportion from the first to be perceived as different.

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27
Q

What does the weber fraction depend on?

A

Individual, stimulus, context and sensory modality.

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28
Q

What does Fechner’s law hold?

A

People subjectively experience only a fraction of actual increases in stimulation but the percentage is predictable. Each jnd is one unit.

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29
Q

What is steven’s power law?

A

The actual magnitude of the stimulus grows exponentially — by some power (squared, cubed, etc).

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30
Q

What is sensory adaptation?

A

Constant sensory inputs provide no new information about the environment, so the nervous system ignores them.

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31
Q

What is subliminal perception?

A

Stimulus passes our absolute threshold but does not cause such a difference that we are able to consciously process it.

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32
Q

What is light?

A

Electromagnetic radiation that travels in waves and is characterised by oscillation.

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33
Q

What does frequency determine?

A

Determines hue. Short wavelength at high frequency is blue. Long, low frequencies as reds.

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34
Q

What does amplitude relate to?

A

Brightness. Lower amplitude is dull and muted. Bright at high amplitude.

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35
Q

What focuses light on the retina?

A

Cornea, pupil, and lens.

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36
Q

What is the cornea?

A

A tough, transparent tissue covering the front of the eyeball. Constructed to bend (or refract) light rays travelling through air.

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37
Q

What is the pupil and iris?

A

Pupil is an opening in the centre of the iris. Muscle fibres in the iris cause the pupil to expand (dilate) or constrict to regulate the amount of light entering the eye.

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38
Q

What is the lens?

A

An elastic, disc-shaped structure about the size of a lima bean that focuses the eyes. Muscles attached to cells surrounding the lens alter its shape to focus on objects at various distances.

39
Q

What is accommodation in vision?

A

Changes in the shape of the lens that focus light rays. The lens flattens for distant objects and becomes more rounded or spherical for closer objects.

40
Q

What is the retina?

A

A light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye that transduces light into visual sensations.

41
Q

What are the layers of the retina?

A
  1. Light passes through layers of neurons
  2. Reach photoreceptors (rods and cones)
  3. Receptors connect to bipolar cells
  4. Bipolar cells pass info to ganglion cells
    5.Axons of ganglion cells form optic nerve
42
Q

How many rods and cones does the retina have?

A

Approximately 120 million rods and 8 million cones.

43
Q

What are rods sensitive to?

A

Light, allowing vision in dim light.

44
Q

What do cones produce?

A

Psychological experience of colour.

45
Q

Where are cones located?

A

Concentrated in the centre of the retina in the fovea.

46
Q

What is the fovea?

A

Central region of the retina and is most sensitive to small detail, so vision is sharpest for stimuli directly in sight.

47
Q

What are bipolar cells?

A

Neurons in the retina that combine information from many receptors and excite/ produce graded potentials on ganglion cells.

48
Q

What are ganglion cells?

A

Nerve cells in retina that integrate information from multiple bipolar cells. Their long axons bundle together to create optic nerve.

49
Q

What is the blind spot?

A

The point on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye. Has no receptor cells. Brain fills in gap.

50
Q

What is bleaching?

A

Occurs when photosensitive pigments in rods and cones change chemical structure/break down in response to light, losing their colour.

51
Q

What are receptive fields?

A

Areas that are excited or inhibited by the arriving sensory information.

52
Q

What is single-cell recording?

A

Researchers insert a tiny electrode into the brain or retina of an animal, close enough to a neuron to detect when it fires. Psychologists can map the receptive fields of the ganglion cells of the retina.

53
Q

What is Lateral Inhibition?

A

The process by which adjacent visual units inhibit or suppress each other’s level of activity. Allows humans to perceive edges and changes in brightness and texture that signal where one surface ends and another begins.

54
Q

What is the superior colliculus?

A

Helps control eye movements. Respond to the presence or absence of visual stimulation. Integrate input from the eyes and the ears.

55
Q

How does visual stimuli reach the optic tracts?

A
  1. Retina >optic nerve> optic chiasm.
  2. optic chiasm >splits>
  3. Processes from both hemispheres
  4. Combined info from both eyes to optic tracts.
56
Q

What are the occipital lobes?

A

Are responsible for visual perception, including colour, form and motion. Contains most of Primary Visual Cortex. Mapping, spatial reasoning, visual memory. Transmits visual info to other brain regions.

57
Q

What is the visual cortex?

A

From the lateral geniculate nucleus visual information travels to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobes.

58
Q

What is the primary visual cortex? V1

A

Is the ‘first stop’ in the cortex for all visual information.
Neurons in this region begin to ‘make sense’ of visual information through the action of neurons known as feature detectors.

59
Q

What are feature detectors?

A

Specialized cells that respond to specific patterns or orientations.

60
Q

What are simple cell feature detectors?

A

Respond most vigorously to lines of a particular orientation, such as horizontal or vertical

61
Q

What are complex cell feature detectors?

A

Generally cover a larger receptive field and respond when a stimulus of the proper orientation falls anywhere within their receptive field.

62
Q

What does the ‘what’ pathway determine?

A

Runs from primary visual cortex in the occipital lobes through the lower part of the temporal lobes, is involved in determining what an object is. Directly below those involved in language.

63
Q

What does the ‘where’ pathway locate?

A

Circuits in the parietal lobes, adjacent to the ‘where’ pathway, process information about the position of the body in space.

64
Q

What does opponent-process theory argue?

A

Argues for the existence of pairs of opposite primary colours linked in three systems: a blue–yellow system, a red–green system and a black–white system (after images).

65
Q

What does the Young–Helmholtz theory propose?

A

TRICHROMATIC The eye contains three types of receptors, each maximally sensitive to wavelengths of light that produce sensations of blue (S) , green (M) or red (L).

66
Q

Where do the theories of colour perception occur?

A

Trichromatic in retina. Opponent-process in higher neural levels.

67
Q

What initiates hearing or audition?

A

A vibrating object sets air particles in motion that collied.

68
Q

What are soundwaves?

A

Pulsations of acoustic energy and travel at 340m/p/s. Slow at a distance and travels through most objects.

69
Q

What are the three properties of acoustic energy?

A

Frequency, complexity and amplitude.

70
Q

What is frequency (pitch)?

A
  • The number of cycles p/s.
  • Cycle = Expansion and contraction of air
  • Hz = 1 cycle p/s
  • Pitch = High fr-low fr
71
Q

What is the range young adults can here in Hz.

A

Young adults can hear frequencies from about 15 to 20 000 Hz.

72
Q

What does amplitude (loudness) refer to in sound?

A
  • Height + depth of wave
  • Loudness = loud=greater amplitude
  • Decibels dB = 0=AT
73
Q

What is complexity (timbre)?

A

Is the extent to which a sound is composed of multiple frequencies, and corresponds to the timbre. The texture of sound.

74
Q

What triggers action potentials in the auditory nerve?

A

Vibrations in the fluid-filled cochlea

75
Q

What is the process of transduction of hearing?

A
  1. Pinna
  2. Auditory canal + amp x2
  3. Eardrum vibrates
  4. Ossicles set off + amp x2
  5. Stirrup vibs oval window
  6. OW vibrates = waves in vestibular canal fluid > tympanic canal
  7. Corti = Flex basilar & tectorial membrane
  8. Cilia bend + trigger action potential in auditory nerve neurons.
76
Q

What are the parts of the eardrum?

A

Ossicles = hammer, anvil and stirrup.

77
Q

What is conduction loss?

A

Failure of the outer or middle ear to conduct sound to the receptors in the hair cells.

78
Q

What is sensorineural loss?

A

Failure of receptors in the inner ear or of neurons in any auditory pathway in the brain.

79
Q

What is place theory?

A

(High fr) Different areas of the basilar membrane respond to different frequencies.

80
Q

What is frequency theory?

A

(low fr) At very low frequencies the entire basilar membrane vibrates fairly uniformly.

81
Q

What are the neural pathways of audition?

A
  1. Inner ear > auditory nerve cochlear nucleus (medulla)
  2. Medulla > X over > olivary nucleus.
  3. Olivary nucleus > inferior colliculus (L+R integration)
  4. Medial geniculate nucleus (thalamus)
  5. Thalamus > auditory cortex (temporal lobes).
82
Q

What is sound localisation?

A
  • Identifying the location of a sound in space.
  • Differences between the two ears in loudness and timing of the sound.
  • The basis for sound localisation lies in binaural neurons.
83
Q

How does the brain use binaural neurons to process frequencies?

A

High fr = loudness = head blocks other ear

Low fr = timing = difference of arrival at ear

84
Q

What does olfaction allow us to do?

A
  • Detect danger
  • Discriminate palatable or unpalatable/spoiled foods
  • Recognise familiar others.
85
Q

How does olfaction relate to reproduction?

A

Humans appear both to secrete and sense olfactory cues related to reproduction (pheromones).

86
Q

How many olfactory receptors do humans have?

A

Approx 10 million

87
Q

What is the stimuli involved with olfaction?

A

Gases suspended in air

88
Q

What are the thresholds for odours?

A

Low as 50 trillion molecules of air.

89
Q

How many modes of perception does olfaction have?

A

Olfaction has two modes of perception but only one set of receptors.

90
Q

What is flavour binding?

A

Dual perceptual process. Vapours travel up the back of the mouth into the nasal cavity; this process actually accounts for much of the flavour.

91
Q

What is the neural pathway of olfaction?

A
  1. Nasal cavities (nose, throat)
  2. Mucus of epithelium
  3. Receptor cells in olfactory nerve
  4. Olfactory bulbs
  5. Olfactory tract
  6. Primary olfactory cortex
  7. Thalamus and amygdala
92
Q

Where do olfactory receptor cells transmit information?

A

Olfactory cortex deep in frontal lobes.

93
Q
A

EXAM PSYCH101 (4 decks)

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