AP Pyschology Unit 4: Sensation and Perception

seeing is called…

visual

hearing is called…

auditory

tasting is called…

gustatory

smelling is called…

olfactory

sense of touch is called…

tactile

balance is called…

vestibular

body sense is called…

kinesthetic

sensantion

a process by which our sensroy receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus (or physical) energy and encode it as neural signals

perception

taking the sensory information and understanding it

bottom up

what our bodies detect

top down

our minds interpreting what our senses detect

prosopagnosia

complete sensation in the absence of perception

sekective attention

the focusing of a conscious awareness on a particular stimulous

conscious

being awake alert, and aware of your own existence, thoughts, sensations, and surroundings

cocktail party effect

being able to pay attention to one voice among many

inattentional blindeness

your attention is focused elsewhere

change blindness

failing to notice changes in an environment

change deafness

failing to notice change in sounds

choice blindness

failing to notice a change in choices

psychophysics (give example to fully understand)

study of the relationships between physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them ( think when vision receives light energy, psychological we think of that as brightness

brightness

vision receiving light energy

volume

hearing receives sound waves/energy

weight

touch receives mechanical energy

energy

the capacity to do work

sweetness

taste receive chemical energy

threshold

the level of sensory stimulation necessary for stimulation

Absolute Threshold

minimum stimulation needed to detect a stimulous 50% of the time

wht does absolute threshold change with?

age

signal detection theory

predicys how and when we detect the presence of a faight stimulus amid back ground noise

what factors effect this

experience

expectations

motivation

level of fatigue, motivation, expectations, exeperience

what does it assume?

that there is no single absolute threshold

what does it investigate

the effects of distractions and interference (exhausted parents)

subliminal stimulation

when stimuli are below ones absolute threshold for conscious awarness

• we unconscously sense

• placebo

• don’t even realize

example of subliminal messages

hungry during and advertizment

difference threshold

minimum between two stimuli to dect the difference 50% of the time

JND

just noticable difference

what does webers law say

to perceive as different, two stimulimust different by a constant minimum percentage

what is the change need proportional to

the original internsity of the stimulous, the more intense the stimulus the more it will need to change before we notice a difference

sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivty as a consequence of constant stimulation (losing attention to unneeded sensory information)

transduction

the process by which our sensory system converts stimulus energies into neural messages

• conversion of one form of energy to another

how does transduction work

recieve stimulus, turned into neural impulses, travels first to thalamuc, then to different cortices of the brain

whats our most dominant sense

vision

what are the steps to vision

1. gathering light —> the color we see depends on:

   1. light intsity and light wavelength

hue

color we experience

wavelength

the distance from one wave peak to the next

intensity

amounf of energy in light waves

amount of energy in a wave is determined by…

amplitude (brightness/loudness) ASK

subtractive color mixing

results is partially or completely subtracting some wavelengths o light and not other. the color that comes out depends on which parts of the spectrum are not absorbed

additive color mixing

mixed different colored lights, it starts with darkness, then light sources are added in proportions to produce a range of colors.

how the eye works:

• the light enters cornea first

  • light is focased by bending

• then goes through pupil (controlled by iris)

  • iris dilates or constricts by responding to light intensity and emotions

• as light goes through lens, image is flipped and inverted

• image projects on retina

  • rods and cones here begin processing visual info and send off chemical reactions from a synapse with bipolar celss

• These cells trsduct light energy into neural impukses

• The action potential travels down ganglion cells to send info up the optic nerve

• carried info to be processed by thalamus

• thalamus sends info the visual cortex in the occipital lobe

• the brain then contrast what you are seeing and turns image right side up

cornea

protective covering

helps focuslight by bending it

send light to pupil

pupil

- adjustable opening in the center of the eye

gets light from cornea

a small opening/whole works like the shutter of a camera

iris

the muscles that control the pupil opening

colored portion of the eye and a muscular tissue and they dilate it or open it to let in more light and make it smaller to let in less light

lens

behind the pupil

transparent struture

changes shape to help focus images on the retina

accomodation

the process by which the eyes lens changes shape to focus near or far object in the retina

retina

the light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing receptor rods and cones plus layer of neurons that begin to process visual information

where the focuses inverted imaje projects onto

• like a screen on the back of eye

rods and cones

photoreceptors that begin the processing of visual information

here are specialized neurons that are activated by different wavelength of light

set off chemical reactions

bipolar cells

• create visual neural impulses

what the cones and rods form a synapse with

transducts light energy into neural impulses

ganglion cells

• the action potention travels down this

• found only in retina

• sends info up optic nerve

optic nerve

buncle of neurons that take information from the retina to the brain

thalamus

sensory switchboard

• where the optic nerve carries neural information to processed

• can send nearly 1 million ganglion fibers at once

• sends information to visual cortext

fovea

central focus of the retina where cones cluster

rods

• periphreal retin

• detact black, white, grey

• twighlight or low light

cones

• near center of retina near fovea

• finde detail and color vision

• daylight or well-lit conditions

blindspot

the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a blind spot because no receptor cells are located there

acutity

the sharpness of vision

nearsightedness

condition in which nearby objects are seen more clearly than distant object because distant object in front of retina

farsightedness

condition in which faraway object are seen more clearly than near objects because the image of near objects is focused behind retina

optic nerve

never that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain

feature detectors

nerve cells in the brain that respond to certain features

• shape

• angle

• movement

parallel processing

stimultaneous processing of several

trichromic theory

• young and helmolz

• three different retinal color receptors:

  • red

  • green

  • blue

color constancy

perciebing familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the objects

audition

the sense of hearing

what are we to faint sounds

sensitive

amplitude

strength of sound waves determines loudness

frequency

the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time

what determines pitch

frequency

pitch

a tones highness or lowness