W4 - sensation and perception Flashcards
connection between:
Neural World and Physical World
Transduction
connection between:
Physical World and Psychological World
Action
connection between:
Psychological World and Neural World
Perception
Psychophysics
The realtionship beween physical and psychological worlds via the nueral world
wave lengths of light are phyically classed as?
electromagnetic Energy
the range of human vs dog hairing
Human: 64Hz - 23,000Hz
Dog: 67Hz - 45,000Hz
phyiscal form of colour
wavelength
phyiscal form of temperature
kinetic energy
phyiscal form of aroma
chemical shape
phyiscal form of texture
vibration
phyiscal form of pitch
frequancy
phyiscal form of loudness
amplitude
phyiscal form of pain
tissue damage
Absolute Threshold
The smallest amount of stimulation needed for detection by a sense.
Discrimination Threshold
whether you can tell the diffrenace
sesitivity
How well can you distinguish between when th stimulus is present or adsent.
Sensitivity means you have a high hit rate and a low false alarm rate
Response bias
presented with the sam stimulus intesity, different participants migt respond differently not because they have different perceptual sensistivities, but because they are more/less biased in respoinding to the task.
Signal Detection Theory
allows us to seperate sensitivity from response bias and distuish between them
what does the Discrimination Threshold depend on
how big/strong/bright/loud the origial stimulus is.
Just noticeable difference (JND)
discrimination threshold:
smallest perceivable difference
The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (see Differential Threshold)
Weber’s Law
States that just noticeable difference is proportional to the magnitude of the initial stimulus.
Weber Fraction
K = JND/baseline
My grandmother has a very hard time hearing my older brother when he talks, but she hears me just fine. We think we speak at the same volume. What might you conclude about grandmother’s hearing?
her absolute threshold for high frequencies has increased.
Have you ever had a false sensation that your phone has vibrated to indicate you have a message, but when you check, there’s nothing there. In signal detection terms, this is an example of
a false alarm
The Weber fraction for telling that two sounds have a different amplitude is .04 (or 4%). If I present a first tone that is 20 decibels, how many decibels will a louder tone need to be for me to tell they are different?
28dB
rods
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to low levels of light. Located around the fovea.
cones
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to color. Located primarily in the fovea.
Trichromatic Theory
Colour perception is mediated by cones.
There are three cone types: S-cones are most sensitive at short wavelengths (blue), M-cones at medium wavelengths (green), and L-cones at long wavelengths (red).
Your brain perceives colour based on the combination of photoreceptors that are activated in a specific location.
Ishihara plate
a way of determining colour blindness
Colour vision deficits (colour blindness)
here are two basic forms. Either the person has only one type of cone
(monochromat – very rare) or two types (dichromat)
Callitrichids
Marmosets, tamarins, capuchins - gendered colour defficencey
Males – dichromats
Females – dichromats and trichromats
Colour opponency
Colour opponency explains how we perceive color through opposing pairs:
red-green, blue-yellow, and black-white.
Activation of one color inhibits its opposite, helping explain why we can’t see certain combinations, like reddish-green, and phenomena like color afterimages.
Perceptual Constancy
objects maintain their properties even when the context chnages thir physical characteristics.
the dress
Overall, 57% of subjects described the dress as blue/black; 30% as white/gold, 11% as blue/brown, and 2% as something else
lightness constancy
our brains take the shadows into account when creating the perception of light and dark.
Agnosia
Loss of the ability to perceive stimuli.
anosmia
Loss of the ability to smell.
Audition
Ability to process auditory stimuli. Also called hearing.
Auditory canal
Tube running from the outer ear to the middle ear.
Auditory hair cells
Receptors in the cochlea that transduce sound into electrical potentials.
Binocular disparity
Difference is images processed by the left and right eyes.
Binocular vision
Our ability to perceive 3D and depth because of the difference between the images on each of our retinas.
Bottom-up processing - perception
Building up to perceptual experience from individual pieces.
Chemical senses
Our ability to process the environmental stimuli of smell and taste.
Cochlea
Spiral bone structure in the inner ear containing auditory hair cells.
Dark Adaption
Adjustment of the eye to low levels of light
Differential threshold (or difference threshold)
The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (See Just Noticeable Difference (JND))
Dorsal Pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “where” pathway.
Gustation
ability to process gustatory stimuli. Also called taste.
Light adaptation
adjustment of the eye to high levels of light
Mechanoreceptors
Mechanical sensory receptors in the skin that respond to tactile stimulation.
Multimodal perception
The effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the perception of events and objects in the world.
Nociception
our ability to sense pain
odorants
chemicals transduced by olfactory receptors
Olfaction
ability to process olfactory stimuli. also called smell
Olfactory epithelium
organ containing olfactory receptors
Opponent-process theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by cells responsive to pairs of colors.
Ossicles
A collection of three small bones in the middle ear that vibrate against the tympanic membrane.
pinna
the outermost portion of the ear
Primary auditory cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing auditory stimuli.
Primary somatosensory cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing somatosensory stimuli.
Primary visual cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing visual stimuli.
Principle of inverse effectiveness
The finding that, in general, for a multimodal stimulus, if the response to each unimodal component (on its own) is weak, then the opportunity for multisensory enhancement is very large. However, if one component—by itself—is sufficient to evoke a strong response, then the effect on the response gained by simultaneously processing the other components of the stimulus will be relatively small.
retina
cell layer in the back of the eye containing photoreceptors
Sensory adaptation
Decrease in sensitivity of a receptor to a stimulus after constant stimulation.
Shape theory of olfaction
Theory proposing that odorants of different size and shape correspond to different smells.
Signal detection
Method for studying the ability to correctly identify sensory stimuli.
Somatosensation
Ability to sense touch, pain and temperature.
Somatotopic map
Organization of the primary somatosensory cortex maintaining a representation of the arrangement of the body.
sound waves
changes in air pressure. the physical stimulus for audition.
Superadditive effect of multisensory integration
The finding that responses to multimodal stimuli are typically greater than the sum of the independent responses to each unimodal component if it were presented on its own.
Tastants
Chemicals transduced by taste receptor cells.
Taste receptor cells
Receptors that transduce gustatory information.
Top-down processing
Experience influencing the perception of stimuli.
Transduction
The conversion of one form of energy into another.
Trichromatic theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by three different cones responding preferentially to red, green and blue.
Tympanic membrane
Thin, stretched membrane in the middle ear that vibrates in response to sound. Also called the eardrum.
Ventral pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “what” pathway.
Vestibular system
Parts of the inner ear involved in balance.
