Unit 4: Sensation and Perception Flashcards
Sensation
The process by which physical energy comes from the environment (vision, hearing gets worse). (sense,taste,smell)
Sensory receptors
Sensory nerve endings responding to stimuli
Perception
Process of organizing and interpreting or gives meaning to sensory information.
Bottom-up processing
Starts with the sensory receptors, but then works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information. Start assigning meaning to different parts, used at a very starting point, not giving hits (Target bag, 1000 peace puzzle no box. What’s the picture? Start at very little info).
Top-down processing
Is info processing by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions showing our experience and expectations. In addition, gives a big hit right away. (ex:people are shown a list of words printed in different colors. They’re then asked to name the ink color, rather than the word itself).
Selective attention
Focus of conscious awareness (Mrs. O talking, focus on the field). Better known as the cocktail party effect. (ex: hearing your name from a big group).
Inattentional blindness
Falling to see visible objects when our attention is elsewhere (ex: counting basketball passes to the team in white, failing to notice a gorilla comes through).
Change blindness
falling to find changes in the environment (ex: giving directions to someone and the person you give directions to changes to someone else and you fail to notice is someone new
Transduction
Conversion of one form of energy to another.
Psychophysics
The subfield of psychology devoted to the study and physical stimuli. It can also be their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.
Absolute threshold
minimum stimulation in your environment for a stimulus to be detected (hearing the song, smelling the smell)
Signal detection theory
Not just a single threshold: Based on experience, expectations predicts also how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). It also states there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person’s experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness.
Subliminal
Under one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
Difference threshold
The min difference between two stimuli required for detection.
Weber’s Law
The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant percentage (compared to a constant amount). (JND)
Sensory adaptation
Getting rid of a sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation (ex: the pool not feeling cold after getting use to it).
Perceptual set
To perceive things a certain way, based on what we see, hear, taste, touch.
Wavelength
The distance from the peak of one light or can be a sound wave to the next peak. Wavelengths in light waves determine the hue (color) and wavelengths in sound waves determine the pitch (sound).
Hue
Color/ wavelength
Intensity
brightness/ amplitude
Cornea
eye’s clear, protective outer layer covering the pupil and iris.
Pupil
Adjustable opening in the center of the eye where light enters.
Iris
The distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the next peak. Wavelengths in light waves determine the hue or (color) and wavelengths in sound waves determine the pitch (sound)
Lens
Transparent structure behind the pupil, also changes shape to focus images on the retina.
Retina
Light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, contains the photo receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that process visual information.
Accommodation
Lense moving into a certain way in order to form a clearer picture.
Rods
Used at night when cones do not work on the sides. (Mem: fishing rod)
Cones
Used during the day In the center of the eye, near the center of the retina, that detect colors and details. (Memoc: CCC)
Optic nerve
The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain
Blind spot
The point in which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a “blind spot” because there are no receptor cells located in that location.
Fovea
The central focal point in the retina
Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory
(three color theory)The retina contains three different color receptors which are (red, green, and blue) which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color.
Opponent-process theory
Opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) cause color vision. Such as the afterimage effect (staring at a yellow, green, and black flag and when looking away, you see red, white, and blue).
Feature detectors
Nerve cells in the brain responding to shape, angle, or movement.
Parallel processing
Process many things at the same time such as color, motion, form, and depth.
Gestalt
Prefers perceptions of connected and continuous figures. Also, disconnected and disjointed ones.
Figure-ground
Organizing objects from their surroundings.
Grouping
The tendency to put things into groups.
Depth perception
Sees 3 dimensional objects even though they are two (ex: baby walking).
Visual cliff
An apparent but not actual drop from one surface to another.
Binocular cue
Depth cues with both eyes, used to perceive depth between two near objects. By comparing the different images from both retinas.
Retinal disparity
Are differences between the images received by the left eye and the right eye as a result of viewing the world at a different angle.
Monocular cues
Used to help perceive depth by one eye.
Phi phenomenon
Illusion of movement due to rapid stimuli.
Perceptual constancy
Finding objects as unchanging such as brightness, shape, or size. But shape, color, and size can be the same.
Color constancy
Perceiving familiar objects as having the same color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.
Perceptual adaptation
in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field. This is usually done with distorting lenses. When the lenses are removed, it takes some time for perception to return to the original state.
Audition
The sense of hearing, number of wavelengths.
Frequency
Pitch
Pitch
wavelength/frequency
Middle ear
Part of the ear that transmits the eardrum’s vibrations through a piston made of three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) to the cochlea.
Cochlea
Snail shaped, where transduction happens.
Inner ear
the innermost part of the ear that has the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs (important for balance). This is where transduction happens for sound.
Sensorineural hearing loss
Hearing loss caused by damage of the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves. It is also called nerve deafness. This can be caused by disease, but are more often the culprits of biological changes linked heredity, aging, and prolonged exposure to ear-splitting noise or music.
Conduction hearing loss:
hearing loss from damage to the mechanical system, such as the three bones, that conducts sound waves to the cochlea. A hearing aid may help amplify sounds for someone who has conduction hearing loss.
Cochlear implant
A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.
Place theory
Links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated. This theory can explain how we high pitched sounds, but now how we hear low-pitch sounds because the neural signals generated by low-pitched sounds are not so neatly localized on the basilar membrane.
Frequency theory
States that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, enabling us to sense its pitch.
Gate control theory
The spinal cord contains a neurological gate that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The gate is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.
Olfaction
Sense of smell, (chemical sense, goes hand and hand with gustation).
Kinesthesia
Sense of body knows where everything is, and knows where the body moves (ex: track, running,etc). Body connected.
Vestibular sense
Sense of body related to everything around (mmemo: gravity/velocity).
Sensory interaction
One sense may influence the other (smell, taste) (ex: when you are sick and you eat something).
TOOCA
Tympanic membrane –> ossicles –> oval window –> cochlea –> auditory nerve
