S & P Exam 3

alertness

alertness

a state of vigilance; we are awake, mindful, and scanning surroundings; implies we are not attending to any particular stimulus, instead we are waiting to find out what we should be paying attention to

attention

a set of processes that allow us to select or focus on some stimuli; the allocation of our limited cognitive resources to one of many potential stimuli; implies selection; refers to several mechanisms that allow us to direct our perceptual processes to some stimuli but not others; not a single process but many processes; can be sustained or temporary

awareness

the active thought about something, which can be either physically present or just in our imagination

alertness

sustained attention also requires sustained ____

overt attention

form of attention where our attention lines up with where we are looking; attention in which you are actively only paying attention to that one stimulus; ex. looking someone in the eyes while they are speaking and listening to them speak

covert attention

form of attention when your visual attention does not line up with your direction of gaze; where you may be looking at one thing but paying attention to another at the same time; ex. looking at someone while they speak to you but listening to the tv behind them

selective attention

the process of attention that allows us to focus on one source when many are present

divided attention

form of attention that occurs when we try to attend to competing sources of information; the process of attending to multiple sources of information

stroop test

test that is a good example of automaticity

automaticity

refers to those cognitive processes that do not require attention; happen automatically

stimulus onset asynchrony

the difference in time between the occurrence of one stimulus and the occurrence of another

posner study

study that tells us we can devote attention covertly; direct attention to a location in space that we are not looking at directly with our fovae; likened attention to a spotlight that we can shine on particular locations in space, that is, there is a spatial limit to attention, or, visual attention has a size

visual attention has a size

the spotlight concept of attention says that

inattentional blindness

a phenomenon in which people fail to perceive an object or event that is visible but not attended to

fixation point

the point at which participants’ eyes were supposed to be focused; specific point of focus

stimulus salience

refers to the features of objects in the environment that attract our attention; can be any number of features, bright colors, fast movement, personal relevance, or in the nonvisual domain, a loud or distinctive sound or smell

someone saying your name

one example of a salient stimulus that will immediately catch your attention is

attentional capture

the process by which a stimulus causes us to shift attention

visual search

one of the most important attentional tasks in vision; looking for and finding one object amid a background of visual distraction

feature search

a form of visual search in which the search for a target in which the target is specified by a single feature

conjunction search

the serach for a target in whcih the target is specified by a combination of features

feature integration theory

theory that stipulates that some features can be processed in parallel and quickly prior to using attentional resources, whereas other visual characteristics require us to use attention and are done serially and therefore less quickly

change blindness

the difficulty we experience in detecting differences between two visual stimuli that are identical except for one or more changes to the image

rapid series visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm

a series of stimuli appear rapidly in time at the same point in visual space; the stimuli may appear as fast as 10 times per second, participant has to determine when a particular stimulus appears and to press a button or key as fast as possible after that stimulus occurs; allows the researcher to ask many questions about what enhances the attentional focus on the stimulus to be responded to, and the paradigm can also allow investigation of what factors can distract our attention

attentional blink

the tendency to respond less reliably to the second target in a rapid series visual presentation (RSVP) paradigm

repetition blindness

the failure to detect the second target in an RSVP task when the second target is identical to the first one; like attentional blink, it occurs when the second target is presented 500 ms or less after the first target

the orienting attention network

attention network that is also called the dorsal attention network; allows us to engage in visual search and direct our visual attention to different locations in visual space; based in circuits in the parietal lobe

parietal

the orienting attention network is based in circuits in which lobe of the brain?

unilateral neglect (hemifield neglect)

damage to the orienting attention network (allows us to engage in visual search and direct our visual attention to different locations in visual space) can cause multiple different neurological conditions, one of which is callled

the executive attention network

neural processes that choose the stimulus we attend to; focuses on attention by the inhibition of habitual responses and acts as the top-down control of attention; allows us to inhibit auditory stimuli so that we can concentrate on visual stimuli or vise versa; operates on attention directed at memory and higher order cognition; the product of processes in the prefrontal lobe; sometimes called the central executive in models of memory because it comprises the brain regions by which attention is directed to the desired stimulus

prefrontal

the executive attention network is the product of processes in which lobe of the brain

medial parietal lobule

an fMRI study on how the orienting attention network and executive attention network work found that areas of the brain in which two lobes were active during attentional shifts; specifically for the orienting attention network, which area of the parietal lobe was active during shifts of attention?

superior frontal sulcus/gyrus

an fMRI study on how the orienting attention network and executive attention network work found that areas of the brain in which two lobes were active during attentional shifts; specifically for the executive attention network, which area of the prefrontal lobe was active during shifts of attention?

command; perceptual processing

attention must show up as both a ___ from an attention network and a change in ___ _______ in visual areas of the brain

attention

in a single-cell recording experiment with rhesus monkeys, it was shown that at a physiological level, ______ can affect the processing of visual information and at a fairly early stage of visual processing; here ____ acts to decrease the activity of a cell when the effective stimulus for that cell is not being attended to

right; left

in a study that examined shifts in the acitivity within the occipital lobe as a function of attention, when attention was directed to the left, there was more activity in the areas of the ____ occipital lobe, and when attention was directed to the right, there was more activity in the areas of the ____ occipital lobe

hemifield neglect or unilateral visual neglect

damage to the orienting attention network in the parietal lobe, specifically the right posterior parietal lobe, can result in two conditions called

left

damage to the right parietal lobe leads to a deficit in the ____ visual world

prism glasses, listening to music

what are 2 possible treatments for unilateral visual neglect

Balint’s syndrome

a rare condition in which function in both the left and right posterior parietal lobes have been compromised; patients with this condition have a limited ability to localize objects in space; results in difficulty grasping for objects

simultagnosia

one specific consequence of the deficit from Balint’s syndrome (caused by compromised damage to both left and right posterior parietal lobes), a deficit in perceiving more than one object at a time; they focus on the one object that is presented directly in front of them and ignore other stimuli; ignore both the left and the right visual world (unlike unilateral neglect)

novel stimuli

a study that used oddball procedure found that alert babies and older babies showed greater EEG activity; alert babies showed greater EEG activity when presented with the oddball item; infants as young as 4 months orient toward __ _______

perceptual bistability

phenomenon in which a static visual image leads to alternating perceptions; illusions such as: necker cube, rabbit-duck image, and the faces-vase image

binocular rivalry

one of the most striking examples of perceptual bistability comes from a phenomenon known as ___ _____; occurs when a separate image is presented to each eye

visual system is set up to see a single perception of the world, rather than a separate perception from each eye; demonstrates top-down processing aspect of perception

binocular rivalry (when a separate image is presented to each eye) shows that our visual system is set up to see what? it also demonstrates what type of processing aspect of perception?

blindsight

the residual ability to make visual responses when a patient is subjectively blind in certain regions of their visual fiels; patient making visual responses to stimuli they cannot see

the alternate routes of the information projected from the retina to areas in the brain (the lateral geniculate nucleus and then to the occipital lobe, also projects to other areas of the brain such as superior colliculus)

blindsight may be the result of behavior produced by what?

superior colliculus

which area of the brain that is still intact in patients with damage to V1 (such as blindsight) may aid in the possibility of blindsight?

medium

there must be a _____ to conduct sound

air, water, train tracks, bones (anything that can vibrate)

what are some forms of mediums that sound travels through

water

sound travels faster in which form of medium than it does in air?

sound stimulus

the periodic variations in air pressure traveling out from the source of the variations; these periodic variations in pressure are the sound wave, and the source of the variations is the object making the sound

sound wave

when you clap your hands, you disturb the air around your hands and initiate the pattern of high and low pressure air movements that move out in all directions from the source. this pattern is called a

sound wave

the waves of pressure changes that occur in the air as a function of the cibration of a source; the wave moves through its medium even though particles within the wave may stay in the same place

frequency

sound can be measured by; the time between two consecutive high peaks is the cycle of a sound wave

cycles

____ of a sound wave can be measured in their number per second, also known as frequency

weaken

the energy in any sound wave will _____ across time and space

344 m/s (761.2 mph)

how fast does sound travel

echoes, thunder and lightening

what are some examples of the lag between sound and light

4x faster (1,483 m/s)

how much faster does sound travel in water than in air?

amplitude and frequency

two important measures of sound

frequency

_____ is the inverse of wavelength

waveform

how different frequencies interact with one another to create complex sounds, which also affects our auditory perception

loudness

amplitude maps onto _____

pitch

frequency maps on to _____

timbre

waveform maps on to _____

pure tones

sound waves in which air pressure changes follow the basic sine wave format; hear at a particular pitch but does not have the complexity you would expect when hearing a musical instrument (or voice) play (or sing) that particular pitch

amplitude

is expressed as the difference between its maximum and minimum sound pressures; has a very clear psychophysical correlate; loudness; usually measured in decibels

stronger

taller sound waves are _____

loudness

the perceptual experience of amplitude or the intensity of a sound stimulus

decibels (dB)

amplitude is usually measured in

decibel

is 1/10 of a bel, which is a unit of sound intensity

85 dB

sustained exposure to sounds over ____ dB is potentially damaging

frequency

the number of cycles in a sound stimulus that occur in 1 second; the perceptual correlate of this is pitch; inverse of wavelength; measured in Hertz

low; high

tones that have low frequencies are heard as being ____ in pitch, whereas tones that have high frequencies are heard as being ____ in pitch

frequency, wavelength

___ is the number of cycles per second, used when measuring sound; while ____ is the time course of one cycle, measured when discussing vision

Hertz (Hz)

frequency is measured in ____; a unit of measure indicating the number of cycles per second

14,000

by the age of 40 it is unlikely that frequencies above ____ Hz are heard

20,000

children and young adults can hear a range from about 20 to ______ Hz

pitch

the subjective experience of sound that is most closely associated with the frequency of a sound stimulus; the psychological equivalent of frequency

harmonics

the difference in sound quality when different instruments play the same note has to do with the concept of _____

harmonics

higher frequencies present in a complex sound that are integer multiples of the fundamental frequency (main frequency)

pure tones

simple sine waves at single frequencies; virtually nonexistent in nature

complex sounds

almost all sounds are _____ sounds; consist of mixes of frequencies; these frequencies combine to form a complex waveform

complex waveform

waveform that can be broken down into its composite frequencies through a mathematical formula known as a Fourier analysis

Fourier analysis

mathematical procedure for taking any complex waveform and determining the simpler waveforms that make up that complex pattern; the simpler waves used are sine waves

fundamental frequency and harmonics

when doing a Fourier analysis, you break down a complex sound into its ___ ____ and ________

fundamental frequency

the lowest frequency present in the complex sound and the one that determines the perceived pitch of that sound; the harmonics are all frequencies present in the stimulus that are higher in frequency than this

timbre

the fundamental frequency determines the pitch of the sound, but the harmonics provide the ____ that makes the sound of the clarinet different from that of the trumpet or the piano

pitch; harmonics

fundamental frequency determines the __ and additional frequencies represent the ___

lowest

fundamental frequency is always the ____ frequency present in a sound

timbre

the musical term that refers to the perceived sound differences between sounds with the same pitch but possessing different higher harmonics; provides the richness in sound we perceive when we hear a good violinist playing on a well-made violin

phase

the position in one cycle of a wave; there are 360 degrees in a single cycle of a wave

the ear funnels sound waves toward specialized hair cells in the inner ear that transduce the sound from physical sound energy into a neural impulse, which then travels to the auditory regions of the brain

what is the process of hearing a sound stimulus? (beginning with the ear and ending with the brain)

pinnae, external auditory canal, tympanic membrane

what are the 3 main structures of the outer ear

pinnae

the part of your ear that sticks out on the side of your head; collects sound and funnels it into the external auditory canal; the shape of this helps gather sound waves and channel them into the ear; also helps the sound localization

sound localization

the action of determining the direction a sound is coming from

the external auditory canal

after sound is collected by the pinna, it is directed into where?

external auditory canal

also known as this the external auditory meatus; conducts sound from the pinna to the tympanic membrane; about 25 mm long which helps amplify certain higher frequencies; also acts to protect the tympanic membrane

tympanic membrane

known as the eardrum; a thin elastic sheet that vibrates in response to sounds coming through the external auditory canal; sound moving down the auditory canal hits against this, which vibrates in response to that sound; seals the end of the outer ear