Sensation & Perception

Bottom up: process of taking in info from the environment through sensory inputs; automatic; associated with sensation

Top down: having to inspect something in order to notice details; intellectual; associated with perception

Detection threshold: minimum amount of sound, pressure, taste or other stimuli that we can “detect” (50% of the time); absolute threshold

Discrimination: ability to distinguish between 2 stimuli (how different do 2 things have to be in order to differentiate); difference threshold

Weber's Law: the ability to tell the difference between degrees of stimulation, 2 stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage

Sensory Adaptation: when you get used to the data from one of your senses

Sensory Interaction: when two senses interact with each other in order to heighten an experience

Smell: olfactory; temporal lobe

Taste: gustation

Transduction: when your brain takes data and turns it into life experiences

Psychophysics: The study of physical stimuli and it's interaction with sensory systems

Hue: wavelength of light

Pitch: frequency of sound

Brightness: amplitude of light

Loudness: intensity of sound

Saturation: complexity of light

Timbe: complexity of sound

Pheromones: hormones that are released onto something else

Feature detectors: neurons that allow you to identify different aspects of an image

Foveal Vision:  the central vision

Parallel Processing: the brain's ability to process incoming stimuli of differing quality

Stroop effect: delay or interference in reaction time due to conflicts between vision

McGurk effect: when there is a conflict between vision & hearing, vision will always win

Acuity: sharpness of an image

Myopia: nearsighted or farsighted

Glaucoma: pressure on the optic nerve

Cataracts: when your eye lens gets cloudy

Dichromatism: only 2 colors work in your eye

Monochromatism: only 1 color works(black and white)

Feature Detectors: neurons that allow you to identify different aspects of an image

Place theory: high pitch is picked up by basilar membrane; not all hairs vibrate only specific ones do depending on the frequency of the sound

Frequency theory: the brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve

Volley principle: neurons can work together to perceive sounds at frequencies faster

Conduction hearing loss: when something didn’t develop correctly while in the womb, or something in the ear that is responsible for picking up vibrations is damaged

Sensorineural hearing loss: when the parts are fire but the hairs in the cochlea are damaged

Kinesthesis: our system that senses the position and movement of body parts

Vestibular sense: keeps track of your heads relation to the ground

Semicircular canal: helps with keeping balance

Vestibular sacs: fluid filled sacs in the semicircular canal; balance fluid

Gate control theory: spinal cord contains a neurological gate that blocks pain signals, or allows them to pass on to the brain

Nociceptors: pain receptor cells

Nerve fibers: large fibers prevent the message from going through; small fibers let the message go through

Analgesia: the inability to feel pain; may not be able to sweat as a side effect 

Anhedonia: the inability to feel joy or pleasure whether it is social or sexual; reward system didn't develop properly; meth addiction can cause anhedonia

Synesthesia: when your sensory wires get crossed

Prosopagnosia: when you can’t recognize someone based off their facial features (face blindness)

Pareidolia: seeing faces in things that dont have faces

Gestalt: All aspects of an image, allows us to recognize details in an image

Proximity: how close everything is

Similarity: the organization of items with common characteristics

Continuity: an object that doesn’t have any breaks in them

Connectedness: two objects have a connection of some way

Closure: shapes being so close that they are touching

Figure ground: Prioritizes a figure over the supposed “background”

Perceptual set: The predisposition to see something in a certain way

Monocular Cues- things you only need 1 eye for

Distance- how far away something is

Relative size: the bigger something is the closer it is to you

Interposition: if you can see all of something it's close

Relative motion:landscape is going the opposite direction you are going

Relative clarity: the clearer you can see the details on something, the close you are to it

Texture gradient: details of objects will start to disappear the farther away they get

Relative height: objects higher in our vision are perceived as being farther away

Linear perspective: parallel lines eventually appear to meet in the distance

light/shadow: shows if something is being caved in or sticking out

Binocular Cues- things you need 2 eyes for

Depth- the distance from the top or bottom of something

Convergence: your eyes shifting inwards to be able to see something close to you

Retinal disparity: when your brain calculates data from both eyes in order to estimate where one object is

Color constancy- being able to tell the the color of something despite the amount of light that there is

Perceptual constancy- associating certain objects with standard shapes, sizes, color and other characteristics

Brightness constancy- the ability to tell the tone of a color despite the amount of light there is

Phi Phenomenon- an optical illusion that causes you to see a bunch of still pictures in a series as if they’re moving

Stroboscopic Effect (cocktail party effect)- when you play slightly altered pictures in rapid succession

Selective attention- your brain decides to focus on one thing & decides to ignore everything else

Dichotic listening- the process of receiving different auditory messages presented simultaneously to each ear

Inattentional blindness- visual component of selective attention

Change blindness- not noticing a change in something due to a disruption/distraction

Choice blindness- not knowing why you made a choice & sticking with the choice

Visual cliff: Tests the depth perception of a baby by putting them on a table and under the table there is a ledge, and if the baby has good depth perception they will realize that if they step off the ledge they will fall

Natural deprivation: being born blind or deaf

Simulated deprivation: put in a sensory deprivation tank, can't see, can't feel, can't hear, can't taste, can't smell

Mirror Neurons: mimic data collected from your senses

Blindsight: subconscious visual track; being aware of something when you cant see it

Hot/Cold readings: assistants go into the audience and eavesdrop on conversations

Barnum effect: when the description is super general, but specific enough that its believable

Shotgunning: a bunch of info is thrown at you until something sticks

Rainbow Ruse: going to extremes that are applicable to everyone