MEGA Unit 3
Sensation: Process of your sensory receptors receiving & representing stimulus energies from our environment
Perception: Process of organizing & interpreting sensory info that gives meaning to sensation
Prosopagnosia:
Bottom-up processing: Starts at your sensory receptors & works up to higher levels of processing
Top-down processing: Constructs perceptions from this sensory input based on experience, expectations, and context
Selective attention: Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus
Cocktail party effect: One can listen to another person and “drown out” the others in a room
Inattentional blindness: Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere
Change blindness: Failing to notice changes in our environment (form of inattentional blindness)
EX: The video where you are trying to count how many times the ball bounces, and fail to notice someone walking across the screen
Choice blindness: Ways in which people are blind to their own choices and preferences
Transduction: Converting one form of energy to another
Absolute threshold: Minimum stimulation needed to detect particular stimulus 50% of the time also known as the edge of awareness
Signal detection theory: Theory that assumes our stimulus detection depends on our experiences, expectations, motivation, and alertness
Subliminal: Stimuli so weak that they are below our absolute threshold for conscious awareness
Priming: The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing someone’s perception, memory, or response
Difference threshold: Minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time
Weber’s law: Two stimuli must differ by a constant percentage (NOT a specific amount)
Sensory adaptation: Diminished sensitivity as a constant simulation to an unchanging stimulus
Perceptual set: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another
Schemas: Concepts that organize and interpret unfamiliar information
Extrasensory perceptions (ESP): The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input
EX: telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition
Parapsychology: The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis
Wavelength: Distance from one wave peak to the next
Hue: Dimension of color determined by the wavelength of light
EX: color
Intensity: Amount of energy the wave contains
Cornea: The eye’s clear, protective outer layer, covering the pupil and iris
Pupil: The adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters
Iris: Ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening
Lens: The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina
Retina: The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information
Rods: Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray, and are sensitive to movement; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don’t respond
Cones: Retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. Cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.
Bipolar cells: cells in the visual system that connect the photoreceptors (rods and cones) to the ganglion cells
Ganglion cells: cells in the retina that receive visual information from the photoreceptors via the bipolar cells, and pass the information on to the brain
Optic nerve: Nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain
Blindspot: Part of the eye that has no receptor cells, because it is where the optic nerve leaves the eye, the brain fills in this hole, creating a blind spot
Fovea: Central focus point in the retina, around which the eye’s cones cluster
Accommodation:
Feature detectors: Nerve cells in the brain’s visual cortex that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle or movement
Parallel processing: Processing many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions
EX: how an experienced driver processes driving
Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic Theory: The theory that the retina contains three different types of color--one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue--which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color
Opponent-Process Theory: Theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, blue-yellow, white-black) enable color vision
EX: Some cells are inhibited by red, others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green
After images: Afterimages are visual illusions where an image continues to appear in one's vision after the original image is no longer present. This phenomenon occurs due to the lingering effects of sensory receptors in the eyes.
Color deficient vision (color blindness): is a vision deficiency where individuals have difficulty distinguishing between certain colors, most commonly red and green. It is usually inherited and caused by a lack of certain color-sensitive pigments in the cones of the eye.
Gestalt: An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes
Figure-ground: The organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings
Grouping (proximity, closure, continuity): The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups
Depth perception: Ability to see three dimensional objects even though the images that strike our retinas are two dimensional
Visual cliff: A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals
Binocular cues: A depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes
Monocular cues: A depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone
Retinal disparity: A binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance-- the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object
Linear perspective: visual cue in which two parallel lines appear to meet together in the distance
Interposition: If one object partially blocks our view of another, we perceive it as closer
Stroboscopic movement: Brain perceives continuous motion in rapid series of slightly varying images
EX: stop-motion video
Phi phenomenon: Movement illusion created when two or more adjacent objects lights blink on or off in quick succession
Perceptual constancy: Perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change
Color constancy:
Other constancies - (shape, brightness, and size)
Perceptual adaptation: In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or inverted visual field
Audition: Hearing
Amplitude: Height of the sound wave
Frequency: The number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time
Pitch: A tone’s experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency
Decibels: Unit of relative loudness
Outer ear:
Eardrum:
Middle ear (hammer, anvil, stirrup): The chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three small bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup), that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea’s oval window
Cochlea: A coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger neural impulses
Oval window:
Basilar membrane:
Hair cells (cilia):
Auditory nerve: The auditory nerve carries neural messages to your thalamus and then on to the auditory cortex in your brain’s temporal lobe
Inner ear: The innermost part of the ear, containing cochlea, semicircular canals, and the vestibular sacs
Sensorineural hearing loss: Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; the most common form of hearing loss, also called nerve deafness
Conduction hearing loss: A less common form of hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea
Cochlear implant: A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea
Place theory: Presumes that we hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea’s basilar membrane
Frequency theory: Suggests that the brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve. The whole basilar membrane vibrates with the incoming sound wave, triggering neural impulses to the brain at the same rate as the sound waves
Gate-control theory: Spinal cord has small nerve fibers to conduct pain signals to conduct other signals
Phantom limb sensations: Brain interprets CNS activity as normal sensory input, so 7/10 amputees feel movement/pain in limbs that aren’t present
Olfaction/olfactory bulb: Results when molecules of a substance in the air reach a tiny cluster of many receptor cells at the top of each nostril
Kinesthesia: System for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts - sometimes considered a sixth sense
Vestibular sense: Sense of body movement and position including balance that works with the cerebellum
Semicircular canals: The semicircular canals are three fluid-filled structures in the inner ear responsible for detecting rotational movements of the head.
Vestibular sacs: are part of the inner ear and help with balance and spatial orientation. They detect changes in head position and movement.
Sensory interaction: One sense may influence the other
EX: smell impacts how something tastes
McGurk Effect: Effect of lip reading on hearing
Synesthesia: The phenomenon where senses become joined through brain circuits
EX: Hearing a sound reminds someone of a specific taste
Embodied cognition: Influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences & judgment
EX: Carrying a heavier clipboard would make a job candidate feel more important