Unit IV - Sensation & Perception Flashcards
What is sensation?
The process by which
our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent
stimulus energies from our environment.
What is perception?
The process of
organizing and interpreting
sensory information, enabling us
to recognize meaningful objects and events.
What does sensation actually mean?
Your nose, eyes or other sensory organs bring in information…. a smell… a color… a tall, blond boy with freckles…
What does perception actually mean?
Your brain makes sense of that information… oh.. that is my granddad’s rhubarb pie, that turquoise shirt is stunning, hey… is that my brother?
What is bottom up processing?
Starting with the sensory input, the brain attempts to understand/make sense.
What is top down processing?
Guided by experience and higher-level processes, we see what we expect to see.
Give an example of bottom up processing
You see a long, slim, slithering creature on the ground… you process… ah! A snake!
Give an example of top down processing
An experienced hiker, you expect to see snakes on your hike so windy stick, lizards, etc. all seem like snakes.
What is selective attention?
Our tendency to focus on just a particular stimulus among the many that are being received.
Although we are surrounded by sights and sounds, smells and tastes, we tend to pay attention to only a few at a time
What is the cocktail party effect?
you focused your attention on one particular voice (that person who called your name) amidst the crazy loudness of all those other voices.
How does selective attention relate to accidents?
It is not about the cell phone.. it’s about distracting your attention!
Using a cell phone (even a hands-free set)
carries a risk 4 times higher than normal—
equal to the risk of drunk driving
What is selective inattention?
At the level of conscious awareness, we are in only one place at a time and so we miss salient objects that are available to be sensed.
What is inattentional blindness?
failing to see visible objects when our attention or focus is directed elsewhere
What is change blindness?
failing to notice changes in the visual environment
What are the three steps involved in sensation?
Receive
Transform
Deliver
What is transduction?
conversion of one form of energy, such as light waves, into another form, like neural impulses that our brain can interpret
What is psychophysics?
The study
of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli,
such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.
Psychophysics example
what is it about the smell, taste, and texture of buttery popcorn that produces a delicious, satisfied, happy response in you?
What is the absolute threshold?
The minimum stimulation
needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.
What is the difference threshold?
The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time
What is another name for the difference threshold?
just noticeable difference
How do we test for absolute threshold in a sense like audition?
A hearing specialist exposes both of your ears to varying sound levels
For each tone the test defines the pitch at which you can detect the tone 50% of the time.
Why are some people better at detecting signals than others?
Using phone in one class vs another
Exhausted parents still able to hear baby’s cries
What is too much onion on a burger
What is the signal detection theory?
A theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation
What two conditions does the signal detection theory depend on?
Strength of signal
Psychological state
What is Weber’s Law?
To be able to tell the difference between degrees of stimulation, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage
Two lights must differ by ___
Two objects must differ in weight by ___
Two tones must differ in frequency by ___
in order for a difference to be noticed
Lights 8%
Objects 2%
Tones 0.3%
How does Weber’s Law help explain the just noticeable difference (jnd) ?
Weber’s law tells us that the difference must vary by a constant percentage (as shown on the last slide), not a constant amount.
What are subliminal stimuli and how are we affected by them?
Subliminal stimuli are not detectable 50% of the time. They are below your absolute threshold.
You may not notice subliminal stimuli at all if they are weak.
What is priming?
activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response
Even if YOU don’t think YOU notice a stimuli, your brain might, and that can impact you.
What is sensory adaptation?
diminished sensitivity to stimuli as a consequence of constant stimulation
Evolutionary psychologists suggest that once we notice and evaluate a new stimuli as non-threatening, we can pay less attention to it.
This saves our attention for new incoming stimuli, or changes in the existing stimuli. This could be adaptive for survival.
why does sensory adaptation occur?
Being able to ignore unthreatening/unchanging stimuli leaves us free to focus on the stimuli that IS changing.
Our sense receptors are alert to novelty…a new situation means we need to evaluate and assess it and check for danger.
So it is functional…adaptive.
We perceive the world not exactly as it is, but as it is useful for us to perceive it.
What is a perceptual set?
a mental
predisposition to perceive one
thing and not another
…we see what we expect to see
Perceptual set example
Viewing picture and seeing it as an old women or young bride
How does top-down processing influence perceptual set?
our experience with numbers and letters
(13 comes between 12 and 14….
B comes between A and C)
influences our expectation…
How does context influence perceptual set?
Reading from left to right, our expectations
cause us to perceive the middle script differently than when reading from top to bottom.
How does cultural context impact perceptual set?
When asked what was above the woman’s head…. rural East Africans saw a woman with a box on her head and a family under a tree.
How does a different cultural context impact perceptual set?
Westerners,
used to running water and boxlike houses with corners, saw a woman sitting under a window and a family indoors.
What does research show about how motivation can influence perceptual set?
Desirable objects, such as a water bottle viewed by a thirsty person, seem closer than they really are.
(Balcetis & Dunning, 2010).
A to-be-climbed hill can seem steeper when we are carrying a heavy backpack, and a walking destination further away when we are feeling tired.
(Burrow et al., 2016; Philbeck &Witt, 2015; Proffitt 2006a,
Going on a diet can lighten our biological “backpack”. When heavy people lose weight, hills and stairs no longer seem so steep.
(Taylor-Covill & Eves, 2016).
What does research show about how emotion can influence perceptual set?
When angry, people more often perceive
neutral objects as guns.
Baumann & DeSteno, 2010)
Hearing sad music can predispose people to perceive a sad meaning in words that sound alike…mourning rather than morning, die rather than dye, pain rather than
pane. (Halberstadt et al., 1995)
When mildly upset by subliminal exposure to a scowling face, people perceive a neutral face as less attractive and likeable.
(Anderson et al., 2012)
What is parapsychology?
The study of
paranormal phenomena, including
ESP and psychokinesis (the ability of the mind to move objects).
What is ESP or extra sensory perception?
The controversial claim that awareness can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy (mind to mind communication),
clairvoyance (seeing remote events), and precognition (seeing the future).
How have researchers tried to test ESP claims?
In one study, psychologists
created a “mind machine” to see if people could influence or predict a coin toss.
Using a touch-sensitive screen, visitors to British festivals were given four attempts to call heads or tails, playing against a computer that kept score.
By the time the experiment ended, nearly 28,000 people had predicted 110,959 tosses—with 49.8 percent correct.
What have most researchers concluded regarding the veracity of ESP claims?
Researchers have been unable to replicate ESP claims under controlled conditions.
What light energy is visible to humans?
Quite small
We can see light waves with a frequency of a little less than 400nm and a little more than 700nm.
What are characteristics of light waves?
frequency (wavelength)
amplitude (height)
What does wavelength tell us about the light wave?
What color am I seeing?
Short=bluish
Long=reddish
What does amplitude tell us about the light wave?
How bright is the color I am seeing?
Great=bright
Small=dull
What structures of the eye help focus the energy?
Cornea pupil iris lens Retina
What is the cornea?
eye’s clear, protective outer layer covering the pupil and iris.
Light enters eyes through here first
What is the pupil?
small adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light passes
What is the iris?
ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the
eye around the pupil
Controls size of pupil by expanding and contracting over pupil
What is the lens?
transparent structure
behind the pupil that changes shape
to help focus images on the retina.
How does the lens change shape?
lens changes its curvature and thickness in a process called accommodation.
Lens can focus on both far and near objects
What is myopia?
Nearsightedness
Lens only focusing on near objects
Can’t focus on distant objects clearly
What is hyperopia?
Farsightedness
Lens only focusing on far objects
Can’t focus on near objects clearly
What is the retina?
light-sensitive inner surface of the eye containing receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information
Where is the retina located?
along the back of the eye and contains the sense receptor cells that will receive the incoming light waves.
What happens in the retina?
Light waves are transduced into neural impulses by the rods and cones, then passed to the bipolar cells and the ganglion cells
What are rods?
retinal photoreceptors that detect black, white, and gray, and are sensitive to movement.
necessary
for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don’t respond.
What are some characteristics of rods?
Located along retina’s out periphery
remain sensitive in dim light, and they enable
black-and-white vision.
sensitive to faint light and peripheral motion.
no hotline to the brain…they share connections to a single bipolar cell sending a combined message to the brain.
What are cones?
retinal photoreceptors that are concentrated near the center of the retina and function in daylight or in well-lit conditions.
detect fine detail and create color sensations.
What are some characteristics of cones?
cluster in and around the fovea
Becomes unresponsive in dim light/no color
Own hotline to brain
One
cone transmits its message to a single bipolar cell, which relays the message to the visual cortex
What is the fovea?
central focal point in
the retina, around which the eye’s
cones cluster.
Area of GREATEST visual acuity/sharpness
What is the optic nerve?
comprised of the axons of the ganglion cells.
leaves through the back of the eye and carries the neural impulses from the eye to the brain
What is the blind spot?
optic disk is the point at which the
optic nerve leaves the eye, creating
a “blind” spot because no receptor
cells (rods or cones) are located there
What happens to the neural impulse after it exits the eye?
optic nerve carries the impulse to the thalamus and on to the visual cortex of the occipital lobes.
What are the functions of ganglion and bipolar cells?
Neural impulses –> bipolar cells –> ganglion cells
Transmit electrical impulses to the brain
What is the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory?
The theory that the retina contains three different types of color receptors (cones)— one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue—which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color
What about people who cannot see color?
About one person in 50 is color blind.
Males are more affected since the defect is
genetically sex-linked.
Most people are not actually blind to all colors. They simply lack functioning red- or green-sensitive cones, or sometimes both.
Vision is monochromatic (one color) or dichromatic
(two-color) and seems ‘normal’ to them.
What is the Hering opponent-process theory?
The theory that cone photoreceptors are paired together (red-green, blue-yellow, white-black)
to enable color vision.
Activation of one color of the pair inhibits
activation of the other.
For example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red; others are stimulated by
red and inhibited by green.
How does color processing occur?
The retina’s red, green, and blue cones respond in varying degrees to different color
stimuli, as the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory suggested.
The cones responses are then processed by opponent-process cells, as Hering’s
opponent-process theory proposed
What are feature detectors and where are they located?
Feature detectors are nerve cells located in the visual cortex of the occipital lobe that respond to a scene’s edges, lines, angles and movements.
But what do feature detectors do?
Feature detectors receive information from individual ganglion cells in the retina and
pass it to other cortical areas, where
supercell clusters respond to more complex patterns.
How do feature detectors operate in real life?
Kicking a soccer ball into the goal requires instant processing
What is parallel processing
Parallel processing is thinking about many aspects of a problem simultaneously.
This is the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision.
How does parallel processing operate?
The brain delegates the work of processing motion, form, depth, and color to different areas.
After taking a scene apart, the brain integrates these subdimensions into the perceived image.
How do we recognize faces using parallel processing?
To recognize a face, your brain integrates information projected by your retinas to several
visual cortex areas and compares it with stored information
What are super cells or grandmother cells?
Cells that only respond to very selectively to faces
What are the steps in “seeing”?
Retinal processing
Feature detection
Parallel Processing
Recognition
How did the Gestalt psychologists understand perceptual organization?
people who are given a cluster of sensations tend to organize them into a gestalt, a German word meaning a “form” or a “whole.”
Gestalt psychologists believe that in perception,
the whole may exceed the sum of its parts.
How is perception understood by the Gestaltists?
Our brain does more than register information
about the world.
Perception is not just opening a shutter and letting a picture print itself on the brain. We filter incoming
information and construct perceptions. Mind matters.
How does the Necker cube illustrate a Gestalt?
The individual elements of this figure, called a Necker cube, are really nothing but eight blue circles, each containing three converging white lines.
When we view these elements all together, however, we see a cube that sometimes reverses direction.
What are the visual stimuli in the Necker cube?
Blue wedges
What are the products of your mind in the Necker cube?
Circles, Lines, and cube
What is figure-ground?
organization
of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings
(the ground)
How do the Gestaltists apply rules for grouping to perception?
mind brings order and form to stimuli by following certain rules for grouping
perceived whole differs from the sum of its parts
What is proximity?
A Gestalt law of grouping that states we group nearby figures together
What is continuity?
A Gestalt law of grouping that states we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones.
Give an example of the principle of proximity
View three sets of two lines instead of six individual line
Give an example of continuity
Viewing a series of alternating semicircles as two continuous lines- one straight and the other wavy
What is closure?
A Gestalt law of grouping that states we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object.
Give an example of closure.
Perceiving a triangle from three incomplete triangles
What is depth perception?
Ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two dimensional
Allows us to judge distance
What experiment in Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk perform in their Cornell University lab in 1960?
Using a visual cliff to demonstrate that infants can perceive depth
6- to 14-month-old infants were placed on the edge of the “cliff” and coaxed by their mothers to crawl out onto the glass.
What is a visual cliff?
a model of a cliff with
a “drop-off” area that was actually
covered by sturdy glass.
What are binocular cues?
Bi-two
ocular-eyes
depth cues, such
as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend
on the use of two eyes.
How do binocular cues help us judge distance?
As an object becomes closer or father, both binocular depth cues operate to help us judge distance.
How does retinal disparity work?
By
comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computes
distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two
images, the closer the object.
What is convergence?
the inward angle of the eyes focusing on a near object
What are monocular cues
How do we judge whether a person is
10 or 100 meters away?
At such distances, we depend on monocular cues (depth cues available to each eye separately).
What is relative height?
We perceive objects
higher in our field of vision as farther away.
What is relative size?
If we assume two objects are
similar in size, most people perceive the one
that casts the smaller retinal image as farther
away.
What is interposition?
If one object partially blocks
our view of another, we perceive it as closer.
What is relative motion?
As we move, objects
that are actually stable may appear to move.
Give an example of relative motion.
If while riding on a bus you fix your gaze on some point—say, a house—the objects beyond the fixation point will appear to move with you.
Objects in front of the point will appear to move backward.
The farther an object is from the fixation point, the faster it will seem to move.
What is linear perspective?
Parallel lines appear to meet in
the distance.
The sharper the angle of convergence,
the greater the perceived distance.
How does the brain perceive depth using linear perspective cues?
If an object appear to be closer to the converging lines than an object located closer to the origin of the lines, then it is classified as being further away.
What is light and shadow?
Shading
produces a sense of depth consistent with our assumption
that light comes from above.
What is stroboscopic movement
Our brain perceives a rapid series of slightly varying images as continuous movement (a phenomenon called stroboscopic movement).
We construct that motion in our heads, just as we construct movement in blinking marquees and holiday lights.
What is the phi phennomenon?
We perceive two adjacent stationary lights blinking on and off in quick succession as one single light moving back and forth. Lighted signs exploit this phi phenomenon with a succession of lights that creates the impression of, say, a moving arrow.
What is a perceptual constancy
a top-down process that recognizes objects without being deceived by changes in their color, brightness, shape, or size.
What is color constancy?
perceiving
familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing
illumination alters the wavelengths
reflected by the object
What is brightness constancy?
We
perceive an object as having a constant brightness even as its illumination varies.
What is relative luminance?
The amount of light an object reflects relative to is surroundings
What is shape constancy?
We perceive an object as having an unchanging shape, even while
our distance from it varies.
Give an example of shape constancy
A door closing and opening
Give an example of color constacny.
A dice covered in yellow and blue stickers
sides sticker are same color even if light is dimmer
Given an example of brightness constancy.
Checkerboard with a portion covered by a shadow casted by a ball
What is size constancy?
We perceive an object as having an unchanging size
even while our distance from it varies.
Give an example of size constancy
A car maintaining the same size even if it moves two blocks down the road
How does the Ames room alter our perceptions?
This distorted room, designed by Adelbert Ames, appears to have a normal rectangular shape when viewed through a peephole with one eye.
The girl in the right corner
appears very large
because we judge her size based on the false assumption that she is the same distance away as the girl in the left corner.
How does the Ames room work?
Ames room is built with a slight elevation to the floor with one corner being further away from the opposing wall than the other. This creates a distortion
What have we learned from research on restored vision?
A few dozen adults who were blind from birth due to cataracts later gained sight. Most of their life they could see only diffused light.
After cataract surgery, the patients could distinguish figure from ground and could differentiate colors—suggesting that these aspects of perception are innate.
Is there a critical period for development of perception?
Surgery on children in India reveals that those who are blind from birth can benefit from removal of cataracts, and the younger they are, the more they benefit.
But their visual acuity (sharpness) may never be normal. For normal sensory and perceptual development, there is a critical period
What is a critical period?
an optimal period when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences is required.
How does sensory restriction reveal the effects of experience on perception?
Researchers restricted the vision of infant kittens. After infancy, when their vision was restored, the kittens behaved much like the humans born with cataracts. They could distinguish color and brightness but not the form of a circle from that of a square. Their eyes had not degenerated; their retinas still relayed signals to their visual cortex. But lacking early stimulation, their brain’s cortical cells had not developed normal connections.
What is perceptual adaptation?
the ability to adjust to changed
sensory input, including an
artificially displaced or even
inverted visual field
Can we adapt to inverted vision?
“Oops, missed,” thought researcher Hubert Dolezal as he attempted a handshake while viewing the world through inverting goggles.
Yet, believe it or not, kittens, monkeys, and humans can
adapt to an inverted world.
What is audition?
the sense or act of hearing
How do air pressure waves become sound?
Air molecules, each bumping into the next, create waves of compressed and expanded air, like the ripples on a pond circling out from a tossed stone.
As we swim in our ocean of moving air molecules,
our ears detect these brief air pressure changes
What are characteristics of sound waves?
frequency (wavelength)
amplitude (height)
What information does wavelength of sound waves provide?
What pitch am I hearing?
What information does amplitude of sound waves provide?
How loud is the sound I am hearing?
Short wavelength equates to
higher frequency
Longer wavelength equates to
lower frequency
Greater amplitude equates to
louder sounds
Smaller amplitude equates to
Softer sounds
What are the three divisions of the ear?
Outer
Middle
Inner
How does the ear transform sound into neural messages?
Passing through accessory structures to sense receptors, vibrating air triggers nerve impulses that the brain decodes as sounds.
What is the auditory canal?
the channel located in the outer ear that funnels sound waves from the pinna to the tympanic membrane
(ear drum)
What is the ear drum (tympanic membrane)?
thin layer of tissue that vibrates in response to sound waves.
What are the ossicles?
made up of the three smallest bones in the human body transfer the sound wave vibrations from the tympanic membrane to the oval window of the cochlea.
What are the three smallest bones in the human body?
incus, the malleus and the stapes
What is the oval window?
membrane-covered opening of the cochlea. It vibrates when it receives the sound waves and causes the fluid inside the cochlea to move
What is the cochlea?
coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear.
Sound waves traveling through the cochlear
fluid trigger nerve impulses.
How does the sound wave move through the inner ear?
Accessory structures move the sound wave to the sense receptors(stereocilia) in the inner ear where the wave energy undergoes transduction to neural energy that the brain can interpret.
How does transduction occur in the inner ear?
The motion of the sound vibration against the oval window of the cochlea causes ripples in the basilar membrane,
bending the hair cells lining its surface,
How does the nerve impulse move out of the ear?
The hair cell (cilia) movements in turn trigger impulses in adjacent nerve cells, whose axons
converge to form the auditory nerve
How does the message carry to the brain?
The auditory nerve carries the neural messages to your thalamus and then on to the auditory cortex in
your brain’s temporal lobes.
What are the two types of hearing loss?
sensorineural
conduction
What is sensorinueral hearing loss?
Damage to the cochlea’s hair cell receptors or the auditory nerve can cause
sensorineural hearing loss.
With auditory nerve damage, people
may hear sound but have trouble discerning what someone is saying
What is conduction hearing loss?
Damage to the mechanical system—the eardrum and middle ear bones—that conducts sound waves to the cochlea can cause conduction hearing loss. less common than sensorineural hearing loss.
How much sound is too much sound?
As a general rule, any noise we cannot talk over (loud machinery, fans screaming
at a sports event, music blasting at maximum volume) may be harmful, especially if prolonged
and repeated.
What is the problem with headphones?
Headphones direct all of the sound waves into the auditory canal and bombard the basilar membrane.
In the open air, sound waves disperse and are not all directed to one location.
How can headphones help?
When used to protect young children or those with hearing issues from loud sounds
What is the research on hearing loss?
Since the early 1990s, teen hearing loss has risen by a third and now affects 1 in 5 teens.
After three hours of a rock concert averaging 99
decibels, 54 percent of teens reported not hearing as well, and 1 in 4 had ringing in their ears.
Teen boys more than teen girls or adults blast themselves with loud volumes for long periods.
What is a cochlear implant?
a device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea
How does a cochlear implant work?
translating
sounds into electrical signals that are
transmitted to the cochlea and, via the
auditory nerve, relayed to the brain.
How does the brain detect loudness?
A soft, tone activates only the few hair cells attuned to its frequency.
Given louder sounds, neighboring hair cells also respond.
Thus, the brain interprets loudness from the number of activated hair cells.
What is one theory of how the brain detects pitch?
Place theory presumes that we hear different pitches because different sound waves
trigger activity at different spots along the cochlea’s basilar membrane.
Thus, the brain determines a sound’s pitch by recognizing the specific area (on the membrane) that is generating the neural signal.
What is the frequency theory? aka temporal theory
brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve.
The whole basilar membrane vibrates with the incoming sound wave, triggering neural impulses to the brain at the same rate as the sound wave.
If the sound wave has a frequency of 100 waves per second, then 100 pulses per second
travel up the auditory nerve.
How does the volley principle explain hearing higher frequency sounds?
By firing in rapid succession, neurons can achieve a combined frequency above 1000 waves per second
Like soldiers who alternate firing so that some can shoot while others reload, achieving greater combined fire power, neural cells
can alternate firing.
How do the two theories work together to explain how we hear pitch?
Place theory best explains how we sense
high pitches.
Frequency theory, extended by the volley principle, also explains how we sense low pitches.
Finally, some combination of place
and frequency theories likely explains how we sense pitches in the intermediate range.
How do we locate sounds?
Sound waves strike one ear sooner and more intensely than the other. From this information, our nimble brain can compute the sound’s location.
How do we sense touch?
PWCP
a mix of four basic and distinct skin senses, pressure, warmth, cold, and pain and our other skin
sensations are variations of pressure, warmth, cold, and pain.
How does the somatosensory cortex help us sense touch?
This section of the brain receives incoming sensory information from our skin, as well as other senses.
How is pain best understood?
Our experience of pain reflects both bottom-up sensations and top-down cognition.
Pain is a biopsychosocial event.
As such, pain experiences vary widely, from
group to group and from person to person.
How is pain a biopsychosocial event?
Influences from biological, psychological, and social-cultural all impacy how pain should be percieved
How is pain biological?
Sensory receptors called nociceptors—mostly in your skin, but also in your muscles
and organs—detect hurtful temperatures,
pressure, or chemicals.
What are some biological influences of pain?
Activity in spinal cord’s large and small fibers
Genetic differences in endorphin productions
Brain’s interpretation of CNS activity
What is a pain circuit?
Sensory receptors (nociceptors) respond to potentially damaging stimuli by sending an impulse to the spinal cord, which passes the message to the brain, which interprets the signal as pain.
What is the 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 (such as massage) or by information coming from the brain (such as distracting thoughts).
What is phantom-limb pain?
The brain can create pain, as it does in phantom limb sensations after a limb amputation.
Without normal sensory input, the brain may misinterpret and amplify spontaneous but irrelevant
central nervous system activity.
7 in 10 such people feel pain or movement in nonexistent limbs.
(Melzack, 1992, 2005)
How is pain psychological?
Pain is impacted by how much attention we give to it. If we distract our minds with other thoughts, the pain feels as if it has diminished
What are some psychological influences of pain?
Attention to pain
Learning based on experience
Expectations
How else is pain psychological?
Our memories of pain may be edited from the actual pain we felt.
People overlook a pain’s duration and recall two moments: pain’s peak moment and how much pain isfelt at the end.
How is pain social-cultural?
We tend to perceive more pain when others seem to be
experiencing pain.
What are some social-cultural influences of pain?
Presence of others
Empathy for others’ pain
Cultural expectations
How else is pain social-cultural?
We get cues on how to perceive pain from our culture’s views on pain.
What are some methods for controlling pain?
Pain control therapies may include drugs, surgery,
acupuncture, electrical stimulation, massage, exercise, hypnosis, relaxation training, meditation, and thought distraction.
How might placebos reduce pain?
Experiment where two placebos were pitted against each other and provided to two groups for treatment
After two months both groups were reporting less pain
A percentage of people even reported side effects
How might distraction reduce pain?
For burn victims undergoing painful skin repair, an escape
into virtual reality can powerfully distract attention, thus reducing pain and the brain’s response to painful stimulation.
What are the two chemical senses?
Taste or gustation
Smell or olfacion
What is taste?
On the top and sides of your tongue are 200 or more taste buds, each containing a pore that catches food chemicals.
What is smell?
We smell something when molecules of a substance
carried in the air reach a tiny cluster of receptor cells at the top of each nasal cavity.
What are the five basic tastes we can detect? What do these indicates?
Tastes exist for more than our pleasure.
sweet- energy sources
salty- sodium essential to physiological processes
sour- potentially toxic acid
bitter- potential poisons
umani- proteins to grow and repair tissue
How do we actually taste food?
In each taste bud pore, 50 to 100 taste receptor cells project antenna-like hairs that sense food molecules. This is where the chemicals in food are transduced to neural messages for the brain.
Specialized receptors with matching partner cell in brain’s temporal lobes
How does our sense of smell operate?
These 20 million olfactory receptors
respond selectively—to the aroma of a cake baking, to a wisp of smoke, to a friend’s fragrance.
This is where odors are transduced to neural messages for the brain.
Instantly, they alert the brain through their axon fibers.
What happens next in our nose?
Sniffing swirls air up to the receptors, enhancing the aroma.
Receptor cells send messages to brain’s olfactory bulb and then to temporal lobe’s primary smell cortex and to parts of limbic system involved in memory and emotion
The sense of smell is only one of the 5 sense that …..
does not pass neural info through thalamus
How are taste, smell and memory related?
Info from taste buds travels to area between frontal and temporal lobes which is near where brain receives input from sense of smell thus interaction with taste
In what other way are taste, smell and memory related?
The brain’s circuitry for smell (red area) also connects with areas involved in memory storage, which helps explain why a smell can trigger a memory
What are some research on smell and memory?
When put in a foul-smelling room, people expressed harsher judgments of other people and of immoral acts.
Exposed to a fishy smell, people became more suspicious.
And when riding on a train car with the citrus scent of a cleaning product, people have left behind less trash.
How do we sense our body’s position and movement?
kinesthetic sense
vestibular sense
What is the kinesthetic sense?
Position and motion detectors in muscles, tendons and joints sense the position and movement of body parts.
What is the vestibular sense?
Fluid-filled semicircular canals and a pair of calcium crystal-filled vestibular sacs located in the ears monitors the head’s (and body’s) movements.
How do our senses interact?
They can influence each other
Smell impacts taste…ever notice how bland food tastes when you have a cold?
We cannot detect various tastes when
we close our nose.
We see visual images better when they are accompanied by noise.
What is an example of sensory interaction?
We can hear soft sounds better if paired
with a visual cue.
Seeing speaker forming words can makes those words easier to understand for people who are hard of hearing
What is embodied cognition?
the influence of bodily sensations,
gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments
What does research show about embodied cognition?
Holding a warm drink causes people to rate someone more warmly
Being given the cold shoulder by others, people judged the room to be colder
Sitting at a wobbly desk and chair makes others’ relationships seem less stable
What is synesthesia?
In a few select individuals, the brain circuits for two or more senses become joined where the stimulation of one sense (such as hearing sound)
triggers an experience of another
(such as seeing color).
What is an example of synesthesia?
Synesthetes may hear music as colors or
experience numbers as tastes.
