unit 1

Question 1

sensation

Answer 1

refers to the registering of a physical stimulus on our sensory receptors

Question 2

What occurs first sensation or perception?

Answer 2

Sensation is 1st and them Perception
ex. sensation enables us to take in sounds but perception allows us to appreciate the music

Question 3

perception

Answer 3

involves turning the sensory input into meaningful conscious experience

Question 4

neural transduction

Answer 4

changing physical energy into electrical signals (neural impulses) that can make their way to the brain.
ex. someone smells freshly baked bread during the holidays. Using sensation, the person smells and visualizes the bread. Their perception is that someone has made the bread for a holiday meal. T

Question 5

receptors

Answer 5

specialized neural cells
-transduce/transform a physical stimuli into a neural response and then its sent to the brain

Question 6

phenomenology

Answer 6

our internal experience of the world around us
-seeks to understand the outside world as it is interpreted by human consciousness

Question 7

illusion of touch

Answer 7

-aristotle
-a single touch between the tips of 2 fingers, will be experienced as if there were two touches

Question 8

waterfall illusion

Answer 8

a sensory experience that occurs after prolonged experience of visual motion in 1 particular direction

Question 9

Thomas Young said what?

Answer 9

-light is a wave
-color is affected by 3 kind of nerve fibers

Question 11

doctrine of specific nerve energies

Answer 11

-mueller
-it is the specific neurons activated that determine the particular type of experience
-activation of the optic nerve leads to visual experiences

Question 12

constructivist approach

Answer 12

-helmholtz
-we most incorporate information from our existing knowledge to completely perceive the world around us

Question 13

unconscious inference

Answer 13

since our senses do not produce sufficient information about the world, we must use a form of reason, unconsciously, to make an educated guess about what we perceive

Question 14

color opponency

Answer 14

-The opponent process theory suggests that the way humans perceive colors is controlled by three opposing systems.
-any receptor excited by green turns off red and any receptor excited by red turns off green

Question 15

webers law

Answer 15

a just noticeable difference (jnd) between 2 stimuli is related to the magnitude or strength of the stimuli.
-concerns the perception of difference between 2 stimuli

Question 16

fechner

Answer 16

-founder of psychophysics
-the study of the relationship between physical stimuli and perception

Question 17

fechner’s color effect

Answer 17

moving black and white figures create an illusion of color

Question 18

fechner’s law

Answer 18

sensation is a logarithmic function of physical intensity

Question 19

Gestalt psychology

Answer 19

we view the world in terms of general pattern and well-organized structures rather than separable individual elements

Question 20

Gibson and the Direct Perception

Answer 20

information in the sensory world is complex and abundant therefore, the perceptual systems need only directly percieve such complexity

Question 21

information- processing approach

Answer 21

-perceptual and cognitive systems can be viewed as the flow of information from 1 process to another

Question 22

computational approach

Answer 22

studies perception by trying to specify the necessary computations the brain would need to carry out to perceive the world

Question 23

micro electrode

Answer 23

-a device so small that it can penetrate a single neuron in the mammalian central nervous system without destroying the cell
-it can record the electrical activity there or even stimulate the cell by electrical current

Question 24

agnosia

Answer 24

a deficit in some aspect of perception as a result to brain damage