Unit 2.2.6 Vision + Taste Distortions

Question 1

Perceptual distortions

Answer 1

• When an individual’s perceptual interpretation of a stimulus varies from how it is commonly perceived
• Errors in the judgement/interpretation of sensory stimuli

Question 2

Synaesthesia

Answer 2

• A rare condition
• Certain sensations are perceived using another system
• E.g. a person may associate the letter ‘a’ with orange
• Grapheme-colour + lexical-gustatory

Question 3

How synaesthesia works

Answer 3

1) A sensory stimulus is detected by one sensory system
2) Info from another secondary area of the brain is integrated + combined within the cerebral cortex as though it belongs to the same true sensory experience

Question 4

Synaesthesia - causes

Answer 4

• Can be born with it or develop it
• Can be inherited in one’s genes or acquired due to injury or drug use in life
• Having one form = likely to have others
• Possible that people with it have excess neural connections due to less synaptic pruning during early years

Question 5

Spatial neglect

Answer 5

• Condition
• Involving an inability to attend to sensory stimuli
• On one side of the body

Question 6

Spatial neglect - causes

Answer 6

• Brain lesion resulting from neurodegenerative diseases, trauma or a hemispheric stroke
• The hemisphere of the brain that the lesion occurs in dictates which side of space the person can attend to (left lobe injured = right side neglected and vice versa)

Question 7

Spatial neglect - characteristics

Answer 7

• May gaze in a way that ‘drifts’ towards the side of the brain in which the lesion occurred
• May begin to display difficulties in dressing/grooming themselves
• Fail to attend to stimuli on one side of their visual field in obvious ways