Perception, vision, sensation

What is the difference between sensation and perception?

Sensation is the stimulation of a sensory organ, while perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation.

What is transduction in the context of perception?

The conversion of a physical signal into neural code.

What does psychophysics study?

Measures the relationship between the strength of a stimulus and the observer's sensitivity to that stimulus.

What is the absolute threshold?

The minimal intensity needed to barely detect a stimulus, typically detected 50% of the time.

What is the relative threshold or JND?

The minimal change in a stimulus that can be barely detected.

What does Weber's law state?

The JND of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity.

What is signal detection theory?

How the response to a stimulus depends on a person's sensitivity and decision criterion.

What are the four possible outcomes in signal detection theory?

Hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections.

What is sensory adaptation?

The decline in sensitivity to prolonged stimulation over time.

What is the role of the retina in vision?

Detects light and sends neural messages to the brain.

What are the two types of photoreceptors in the retina?

The two types are cones, which are responsible for color and detail vision, and rods, which are responsible for night vision and detecting movement.

How many cones and rods are in the human retina?

Approximately 5 million cones and 100 million rods in the human retina.

What is the fovea?

The area of the retina where vision is the clearest and contains no rods.

What is the optical disk?

Where the axons of the retinal ganglion cells come together to form the optic nerve and contains no receptors.

What wavelengths correspond to the different types of cones?

Violet cones respond to 440 nanometers, green cones to 530 nanometers, and red cones to 560 nanometers.

What is the visual cortex specialized in?

Color vision and visual processing.

What are the two streams of visual processing in the brain?

Dorsal stream (where) and the ventral stream (what).

What type of energy do hair cells in the cochlea respond to?

Hair cells in the cochlea respond to sound waves.

What type of energy do olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) respond to?

Respond to chemicals in the air.

What type of energy do taste buds respond to?

Chemicals dissolved in saliva.

What type of energy do mechanoreceptors in the skin respond to?

Mechanical pressure.

What is consciousness?

A person's subjective experience of the world and the mind.

What does phenomenology investigate?

The subjective experience of a conscious person.

What is the problem of other minds?

The difficulty in perceiving and understanding the consciousness of others.

What is the mind/body problem?

The issue of how the mind is related to the body and the brain.

What did Libet's experiment demonstrate?

The timing of brain activity, conscious wish to act, and actual movement.

What are the four basic properties of consciousness?

Intentionality, Unity, Selectivity, and Transience.

What is intentionality in consciousness?

The quality of being directed towards an object; being conscious of something.

What does selectivity refer to in consciousness?

The ability to focus on specific stimuli while ignoring others, exemplified by the cocktail party phenomenon.

What is transience in consciousness?

The tendency for conscious thoughts to change frequently.

What is thought suppression?

The attempt to change the conscious state of the mind by avoiding certain thoughts.

What is the ironic process of mental control?

Monitoring for errors can lead to increased occurrences of those errors.

What is the dynamic unconscious?

An active system encompassing hidden memories, instincts, and desires.

What is repression?

The mental process that removes unacceptable thoughts from consciousness.

What are Freudian slips?

Unintentional errors that reveal unconscious thoughts.

What is subliminal perception?

The ability to perceive stimuli below the threshold of conscious awareness.

What is the circadian rhythm?

The natural, internal process that regulates the sleep-wake cycle and other bodily functions.

What are common sleep disorders?

Somnambulism, Narcolepsy, Sleep apnea, and Insomnia.

What is the activation-synthesis model of dreaming?

A theory that dreams are the brain's attempt to make sense of random neural activity during sleep.

What are psychoactive drugs?

Chemicals that influence consciousness and behavior by altering the brain's chemical messaging.

What is tolerance in relation to drug use?

The need for larger doses to achieve the same effect due to repeated use.

What are depressants?

Drugs that reduce the activity of the nervous system, such as alcohol and benzodiazepines.

What are stimulants?

Drugs that increase the activity of the nervous system, such as caffeine and cocaine.

What are hallucinogens?

Drugs that alter sensation and perception, often causing hallucinations.

What is hypnosis?

An altered state of consciousness characterized by heightened suggestibility.

memory

the ability to store and retrieve information over time

Three processes of memory

encoding, storage, retrieval

encoding

the processing of information into the memory system

storage

the retention of encoded information over time

Retrieval

the process of getting information out of memory storage

Multi-store model

Explanation of memory that sees information flowing through a series of storage systems

short-term memory

activated memory that holds a few items briefly (20-30 seconds) and few elements (7+/-2).

Long-Term Memory (LTM)

an unlimited capacity store that can hold information over lengthy periods of time

Encoding 1

Levels of processing and elaborative encoding

Encoding 2

Visual imagery encoding

Encoding 3

Organizational coding

Encoding 4

Survival information encoding

storage

the retention of encoded information over time

Three types of storage

sensory, short term, long term

sensory storage

-Holds sensory information for a few seconds or less.-Iconic memory

echoic memory

the very short echo of a voice or sound that remains after the sound production has stopped.

Amnesia

loss of memory

Anterograde amnesia

•inability to transfer new information from the short-term into the long-term store

retrograde amnesia

inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date, usually the date of an injury or an operation

Retrival

bringing memories to mind

•Retrival cue

External information that facilitate the retrival of a stored information

Examples of retrival cue

Encoding Specificity Principle and State dependent retrival

•Encoding Specificity Principle

-When retrival takes place in the same context of encoding, retrival is more effective

•State dependent retrival

-Tendency for information to be better recalled when the person is in the same state of mind

implicit memory

a type of long-term, unconscious memory that allows individuals to perform tasks, skills, and emotional responses automatically without conscious effort

explicit memory

concsious memory

Procedural memory

It's the memory involved in our abilities (know how). Ex: Riding a bike

Memory failure examples

Transience, Absentmindedness,Blocking,Memory misattribution,Suggestibility,Bias, and Persistence

Transcience

we forget things with the passage of time

absentmindedness

-Lapse in attention that results in memory failure

Blocking

-Failure to retrieve information that is available to memory