Psych 1100 Book 2

Our organs detection of external stimuli.

The brains processing of detected signals

Perceive

1. Stimulus

2. Sensation

3. Sensory Coding (Transduction)

4. Perception

Our brains pay attention to things that are prominent

Our brains like to group things

Allows us to see objects as stable even when there are large fluctuations in the sensory info we receive.

A cue to depth caused by the formation of a slightly different retinal image in each eye.

Our prior experiences which shape our expectations

The sensory organs translate the physical properties of stimuli into patterns of neural impulses

Sensory receptors receive physical or chemical stimulation and pass the impulses to connecting neurons which transmits information to the brain in the form of neural impulses. Then neurons in the Thalamus send the impulses to the cortex where they're interpreted as a sense.

Different sensory receptors respond to qualitatively different stimuli.

Quantitative differences in stimuli are coded by the rate of a particular neurons firing.

Increases

You either detected something or you didn't. Detection depends on whether the intensity of the stimulus was above or below the sensory threshold.

Detecting a stimulus requires making a judgement about it's presence or absence based on a subjective interpretation of ambiguous information.

A participants tendency to report detecting the signal in an ambiguous trial.

How a person experiences sensations from the environment.

A decrease in sensitivity to a constant level of stimulation.

Strongly

Our sense of taste

Taste receptors covered in papillae. (We have 8,000 - 10,000)

Uniformly

1. Sweet

2. Sour

3. Salty

4. Bitter

5. Umami (savory)

Smell

Someone who is highly aware of flavors and textures and more likely to feel pain when eating spicy foods. They have 6x as many taste buds as normal tasters

Sense of smell (has the most direct route to the brain)

A thin layer of tissue embedded with smell receptors. These receptors transmit info to the olfactory bulb.

The brain center for smell

Chemicals released by animals that trigger physiological or behavioral reactions in other animals.

(Touch)

Conveys sensations of temperature, pressure and pain. Tells us where are limbs are in space.

Our skin

Anything that comes in contact with our skin.

Pain in a limb that was amputated.

Fast fibers - sharp immediate pain

Slow fibers - chronic, dull, steady pain

The myelination or non myelination of their axons.

Fast fibers - have myelination

Slow fibers - without myelination

20 Hz to 20,000 Hz

Short: waves range from blue to violet

Medium: waves range from yellow to green

Long: waves range from red to orange

The ratio of activity among Short Medium and Long cone receptors.

The wavelengths that it does not absorb.

A process of color mixing that occurs within the stimulus itself; a physical process.

A process of color mixing that occurs when different wavelengths of light interact within the eyes receptors; a psychological process.

Perception of the positions in space and movements of our bodies and limbs.

Perception of balance

the available energy in their environment

The combined firing of many different receptors and the neurons they connect with created our sensations.

An increase in the number of neurons that respond to the stimulation

Primary somatosensory cortex in the parietal lobe

Pain receptors must be activated and a neural "gate" in the spinal cord must allow the signals through to the brain.

This theory conceptualized that pain was a perceptual experience in the brain rather than a response to nerve stimulation.

Auditory neurons in the Thalamus extend their axons to the primary auditory cortex in the temporal lobe. Neurons in the primary auditory cortex code the frequency (pitch) of auditory stimuli.

Perception and recognition of objects (ex. Determining colors and shapes)

Spatial perception (determining where an object is relative to other objects)

The inability to recognize objects

A condition in which people who are blind have some spared visual capacities in the absence of any visual awareness.

Parietal; occipital

Sustained damage to the dorsal stream

Perception is more than the result of accumulating sensory data.

Figure periodically reverses as the visual system strives to make sense of the stimulation.

The closer two figures are to each other the morning likely we are to group them and see then as the same object

Gestalt Psychology describes how percieved features of a visual scene are grouped into organized wholes

We tend to group figures according to how closely they resemble each other

Enables us to consider a scene as a whole rather than as individual parts

The tendency to interpret intersecting lines as continuous rather than changing direction

Tendency to complete figures that have gaps

We sometimes percieve contours and cues to depth that are not there

A hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which data relayed from one level of mental processing to the next always moving to a higher level of processing

A hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which info at higher levels of mental processing can also influence lower "earlier" levels in the processing hierarchy.

Inability to recognize faces

Amygdala

Cues of depth perception that arise from the fact that people have two eyes

Cues of depth perception that are available to each eye alone

A depth cue; because of the distance between a person's eyes, sCh eye recieves a slightly different retinal image

A cue of binocular depth perception; when a person views a nearby object the eye muscles turn the eyes inwards

Near objects seem to pass us more quickly than far objects.

That objects distance from the observer. The farther the object the smaller it's retinal image

A room that plays with linear perspective to make the far corner appear the same distance away as the near corner.

To parallel lines appear to be different lengths although they are the same

If you look at a moving image for a long time and then look at a stationary scene that scene will appear to move

Correctly perceiving objects as constant despite sensory data that could mislead perception.