Psychology Unit 2 SAQ Review

Bottom up processing

starts at the sensory receptors and works up to higher levels of processing, puzzle without box

Top-Down Processing

use prior knowledge to figure out what we are seeing, puzzle with box

Absolute Threshold

the minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time. the quietest sound you can hear in a silent room or the faintest light you can see in complete darkness

Difference Threshold

minimum change between two stimuli or the ability to detect the smallest change in the intensity of a stimulant

Inattentional blindness

the inability ot see an object or a person in our mind, failure to notice something right in front of you

Change Blindness

failure to notice visual change that has taken place

Sensory Adaption

get used to unchanging stimulus, stimulation that is continuous or unchanged eventually disappears, automatic when receptor cells are constantly stimulated, loss of sensitivity to stimuli can occur (constant)

Selective Attention

the capacity for or process of reacting to certain stimuli selectively when several occur simultaneously.

Habituation

get used to repeated stimulus, learning that involves a decrease in responsiveness to stimuli after repeated exposure (intermittent) (environment)

Subliminal Threshold

stimulation below one’s threshold or level of conscious awareness

Perceptual Set

a mental predisposition to percieve one thing and not the other

Cultural and Context Effects on Perception

both play a large role in the way we see things

Rods and Cones

rods are found primarily in peripheral vision, on the retina, visual receptors that respond to dim light, cones are found primarily directly back from the lens, visual receptors used in color vision

Peripheral Vision

side vision, what you see on the side by the eye when looking straight ahead.

Brightness

rods help see in dark light, pupil opens to let light in

Foveal Vision

best focus is here, allows for clear vision with fine detail (visual acuity)

Feature Detectors

helps us make out the outline of objects (edges, lines)

Parallel Processing

we take in form, motion, depth, and color to process images

Gestalt: figure-ground, closure, proximity, continuity,

we organize sensations/ what we see into a “whole”

Depth Perception

 Monocular cues, relative perceptions

Retinal Disparity

each retina gets a slightly different angle of the same object,

Perceptual Adaption

shape, color, and size, objects appear different than they actually are because of our perception

Texture Gradient

texture is clear in the front, becomes less clear in tha back of an image

Convergence

point in a hallway where it looks like everything comes to a point because of balance and symmetry

Common Fate

coordinated motion are grouped together, birds flying in a group

Perceiving loudness and pitch

place theory, we hear different pitches along basilar membrane

Locating sounds

brain analyzes the difference in intensity and time as sound arrives at each ear

Proprioception

awareness of body based on muscles 

Sensory Interaction

senses work together to influence our perception of the world, combining information from different modalities to create a unified experience

Vestibular Sense

balance and movement, detected by inner ear,

Sense of Taste

different areas of the mouth have different tastebuds to taste things, taste is harder to identify when another sense is removed

Sense of pain and touch

everyone percieves pain differently, different pain thresholds