Psychology - From Inquiry to Understanding - Chapter 4: Sensation & Perception

Sensation

Detection of physical energy by sense organs which then send information to the brain

Perception

The brains interpretation of raw sensory in puts

Transduction

Process of converting an external energy or substance into neural activity

Sense receptor

Specialised cell responsible for converting external stimuli into neural activity for specific sensory system

Absolute threshold

Lowest level of stimulus needed for the nervous system to detect a change 50% of the time

Just Noticeable Difference (JND)

Smallest change in the intensity of a stimulu what we can detect

Signal Detection Theory (SDT)

Psychophysical theory which describes the detection of stimuli under conditions of uncertainty

Selective attention

Process of selecting one sensory channel and ignoring or minimising the others

Brightness

Intensity of reflective light that reaches our eyes

Hue

Colour of light lens

Cornea

Part of the eye containing transparent cells that focuses light on the retina

Lens

Part of the eye that changes curvature to keep images in focus

Accommodation

Changing the shape of the lens to focus on objects near or far

Retina

Membrane at the back of the eye responsible for converting light into Neural activity

Fovea

Central portion of the retina

Acuity

Sharpness of vision

Cones

Receptor cells in the retina allowing us to see in colour

Rods

Receptors cells in the retina allowing us to see in low levels of light

Blindspot

Part of the visual field we can't see because of an absence of rods and cones

Trichromatic theory

Idea that colour vision is based on our sensitivity to three different colours

Colour blindness

Inability to see some or all colour

Audition

Our sense of hearing

Timbre

Complexity or quality of sound that makes musical instruments, human voices or other sources sound unique

Cochlea

Boney, spiral-shaped sense organ used for hearing

Organ of corti

Tissue containing the hairs cells necessary for hearing

Basilar membrane

Membrane supporting the organ of corti and hair cells in the cochlea

Olfaction

Our sense of smell

Gustation

Our sense of taaste

Taste buds

Sense receptors in the tongue that respond to sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami and perhaps fat

Pheromones

Odourless chemicals that serve as social signals to members of one species

Haptic

The sense of touch

Somatosensory

Our sense of touch, temperature, and pain

Proprioception

Our sense of body position

Vestibular sense

Our sense of equilibrium or balance

Phantom limb pain

Pain or discomfort felt in an amputated limb

Semicircular canals

Three fluid-filled canals in the inner ear responsible for our sense of balance

Perceptual constancy

The process by which we perceive stimuli consistently across varied conditions

Depth perception

Ability to judge distance and three dimensional relations

Monocular depth cues

Stimuli that enable us to judge depth using one eye

Binocular depth cues

Stimuli that enables us to judge depth using both eyes

Lateral Inhibition

The capacity of a neuron to reduce the activity of its neighbours - Lateral inhibition disables the spreading of action potentials from excited neurons

McGurk effect

A perceptual phenomenon that demonstrates an interaction between hearing and vision in speech perception. Sound is paired with the visual component of another sound leading to the perception of a third sound.

Psychophysics

Branch of psychology that deals with the relations between physical stimulation and mental phenomena

The Stroboscopic effect

A visual phenomenon caused by aliasing that occurs when continuous motion is represented by a series of short or instantaneous samples.

Induced motion

An illusion of visual perception in which a stationary or moving object appears to move or to move differently because of other moving objects nearby in the visual field

Difference threshold

Is the minimum difference between stimuli that can be detected also known as Just Noticeable difference (JND)

Threshold

Level of which we start to experience

Signal Detection Theory

A means to measure the ability to differentiate between information bearing patterns and random patterns that distract from the information

Light

A narrow band within the electromagnetic energy spectrum

Myopia

Short-sighted

Hypermetropia

far sightedness

Inattentional blindness

Also known as perception blindness is a psychological lack of attention that is not associated with any vision defects or deficits - failure to perceive an unexpected stimulus that is in plain sight

Change blindness

Is a perceptual phenomenon that occurs when a change in a visual stimulus is introduced and the observer does not notice (eg when image flicks on and off again)

Presbyopia

Long sightedness caused by a loss of elasticity of the lens of the eye, occurring typically in middle to old age

Gesalt theory

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts

Law of Pragnanz

Overall pricipal in gesalt (Law of simplicity)

Interposition (Gresalt Theory)

Occurs when one object overlaps the other which causes us to perceive depth

Kinesthesis

Meaning to move in the sense that detects movement of the muscles tendons and joints

Binaural cues

Relating to two ears

Monaural cues

Relating to one ear

The process of converting external stimulus energy into neural activity is called __________________.

Transduction

A __________________ __________________ is a specialised cell that transduces a specific stimulus

Receptor cell

The __________________ __________________ is the lowest level of stimulus needed for nervous system to detect change 50% of the time

Absolute threshold

__________________ __________________ states that there is a constant proportional relationship between Just Noticeable Difference (JND) and the original stimulus intensity

Webbers Law - item must go up in percentage not specific amounts

A striking example of the cross modal processing is the __________________ __________________ effect

Cocktail party- (the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli)

Sir Francis Galton (1880) was the first to describe ____________________, a condition in which people experience cross modal sensations, like hearing sounds when they see colours - sometimes called colour hearing or even tasting colours

Synaesthesia

The _________________ spectrum refers to the range of wavelengths of light that humans can see.

Visible

The intensity of reflected light light that reaches our eyes is called _________________

Brightness

Consisting of cells that are completely transparent, the _________________ changes its curvature to keep images in focus.

Cornea

We can think of the _________________ as a 'movie screen' onto which light from the world is projected

Retina

_________________ are receptors cells that allow us to see in low light and _________________ are receptors cells that allow us to see in colour

Rods/Cones

The idea that colour vision is based on our sensitivity to three different colours is called _________________ theory

Trichromatics (Red, Green and blue)

_________________ _________________ is our ability to use minimal patterns to identify objects

Feature detection

A person with _________________ _________________ can tell us the shape and colour of an object, but cant recognise or name it

Visual agnosia

_________________ is the height above the baseline and the _________________ is the distance between the peaks/crests of the wave

Amplitude/wavelength

_________________ refers to the frequency of the sound wave, and is measured in hertz (Hz)

Pitch

The height of a sound wave corresponds to _________________ and is measured in decibels (dB)

Loudness

We refer to _________________ to describe the complexity or quality of a sound

Timbre

the _________________ lies in the inner ear and converts vibration into neural activity

Cochlea

The organ of corti and basilar membrane are especially critical to hearing because _________________ _________________ are imbedded within them

Hair cells

The perception of high pitched tones by the basilar membrane can be explained by _________________ theory

Place

Two theories related to percieving low pitched tones are the _________________ theory and _________________ theory

Frequency/volly

_________________ _________________ is due to a malfunctioning of the eat, especially a failure of the eardrum or the ossicles of the inner ear

Conductive deafness: (hearing loss)

Airborne chemicals that interact with receptors on the lining of our nasal passage are called _________________

Odours

We detect taste with _________________ _________________ that are on our tongue

Taste buds

We are sensitive to _________________ basic tastes, the last of which , _________________ was recently discovered

5-6 / Umami

There is (weak/strong) tendency for individual taste receptors to concentrate at certain locations on the tongue

Weak

Our taste (isnt/is) dependant largely on our sense of smell

Is

Both tasting disgusting food and viewing facial expressions of disgust activate the

Gustatory cortex

What shemicals do some perfume advertisers inaccurately claim are contained in their products which, when worn, allegedly trigger a physical response from others

pheromones

A region of the _________________ _________________ is a site of convergence for smell and taste

Somatosensory Cortex

Researchers have showed that cancer patients who lose their sense of taste have a (better/worse) prognosis

Worse

The body's system for touch and pain is the _________________ system

Somantosensory

Our sense of body position is called _________________.

Proprioception

The _________________ _________________, also called the sense of equilibrium enables us to sense and maintain our ballance

Vestibular sense

We sense touch, temperature and especially pain, with _________________ _________________ _________________.

Free nerve endings

Our fingertips have the (least/most) nerve endings.

Most

Information about body, touch, temperature and painful stimuli travels in the _________________ nerves before entering the spinal cord

Somatic

Touch information travels more (slowly/quickly) than pain stimuli

Quickly

Describe the mirror box treatment, and identify its role in helping people who have lost limbs

Phantom limb illusion used for removing pain from lost limbs