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Chapter 3 Psych
For Exam 1
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| sensation | The process of receiving stimulus energies from the external environment and transforming those energies into neural energy. |
| perception | The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense. |
| bottom-up processing | The operation in sensation and perception in which sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send it up to the brain for interpretation |
| top-down processing | The operation in sensation and perception, launched by cognitive processing at the brain’s higher levels, that allows the organism to sense what is happening and to apply that framework to information from the world. |
| How to remember bottom-up and top-down processing apart through music | When you listen to a song for the first time, bottom-up processing allows you to get a feel for the tune. Once you know the song well, you can create a perceptual experience in your mind’s ear, by “playing” it in your head. That’s top-down processing. |
| Which of bottom-up and top-down have a tendency to not always be accurate? Remember the music example. | top-down expectations are not always accurate, what you remember or expect could be different than reality, as in the case of singing lyrics wrong. |
| Is Bottom-up and Top-down processing considered to be a unified information processing system? | Yes, they are essentially inseparable |
| How does top-down processing affect stereotypes? | We see what we expect, so when we expect someone to be nice, we look more favorably on them then someone we would expect to be mean. |
| afferent | arrives at the brain |
| sensory receptors | Specialized cells that detect stimulus information and transmit it to sensory (afferent) nerves and the brain |
| Photoreception | detection of light, perceived as sight |
| Mechanoreception | detection of pressure, vibration, and movement, perceived as touch, hearing, and equilibrium (or balance) |
| Chemoreception | detection of chemical stimuli, perceived as smell and taste |
| synaesthesia describes | an experience in which one sense induces an experience in another sense |
| extrasensory perception (ESP) | ESP means that a person can detect information from the world without receiving concrete sensory input. The vast majority of psychologists reject the idea that people can read each other’s minds or foretell the future and research supports this conclusion |
| absolute threshold | The minimum amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect |
| noise | Irrelevant and competing stimuli—not only sounds but also any distracting stimuli for the senses. |
| difference threshold | The degree of difference that must exist between two stimuli before the difference is detected |
| Weber’s law | The principle that two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount) to be perceived as different |
| subliminal perception | The detection of information below the level of conscious awareness |
| signal detection theory | An approach to perception that focuses on decision making about stimuli in the presence of uncertainty. |
| selective attention | The act of focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others. |
| cocktail party effect | the ability to focus on one voice among many in a crowded airline terminal or noisy restaurant |
| Novel stimuli | those that are new, different, or unusual |
| Inattentional blindness | the failure to detect unexpected events when attention is engaged by a task |
| change blindness | the tendency to miss changes that have occurred in a scene |
| perceptual set | A predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular way. |
| sensory adaptation | A change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation |
| height, or amplitude | determines the brightness of the stimulus. |
| purity of wavelengths | whether they are all the same or a mix of waves |
| saturation | richness, of a visual stimulus |
| wavelength of light | distance from the peak of one wave to the peak of the next. Wavelengths of visible light range from about 400 to 700 nanometers (nm) |
| sclera | the white, outer part of the eye that helps to maintain the shape of the eye and to protect it from injury. |
| iris | the colored part of the eye, which might be light blue in one individual and dark brown in another. |
| pupil | appears black, is the opening in the center of the iris. The iris contains muscles that control the size of the pupil, and hence regulates the amount of light that enters the eye. |
| cornea | clear membrane at the very front of the eye |
| lens | a transparent and somewhat flexible, disk-like structure filled with a gelatin-like material. |
| retina | The multilayered light-sensitive surface in the eye that records electromagnetic energy and converts it to neural impulses for processing in the brain |
| rods | The receptor cells in the retina that are sensitive to light but not very useful for color vision. |
| cones | The receptor cells in the retina that allow for color perception |
| fovea | a tiny area in the center of the retina at which vision is at its best |
| optic nerve | The structure at the back of the eye, made up of axons of the ganglion cells, that carries visual information to the brain for further processing |
| blind spot | the area on the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye on its way to the brain |
| visual cortex | Located in the occipital lobe, the part of the cerebral cortex involved in vision. |
| feature detectors | Neurons in the brain’s visual system that respond to particular features of a stimulus. |
| parallel processing | The simultaneous distribution of information across different neural pathways. |
| binding | In the sense of vision, the bringing together and integration of what is processed by different neural pathways or cells |
| trichromatic theory | Theory stating that color perception is produced by three types of cone receptors in the retina that are particularly sensitive to different, but overlapping, ranges of wavelengths |
| color deficient vision | dysfunctional color vision, color blind |
| Afterimages | sensations that remain after a stimulus is removed |
| opponent-process theory | Theory stating that cells in the visual system respond to complementary pairs of red-green and blue-yellow colors; a given cell might be excited by red and inhibited by green, whereas another cell might be excited by yellow and inhibited by blue |
| figure-ground relationship | The principle by which we organize the perceptual field into stimuli that stand out (figure) and those that are left over (ground). |
| gestalt psychology | A school of thought interested in how people naturally organize their perceptions according to certain patterns |
| depth perception | The ability to perceive objects three dimensionally. |
| binocular cues | Depth cues that depend on the combination of the images in the left and right eyes and on the way the two eyes work together |
| convergence | A binocular cue to depth and distance in which the muscle movements in an individual’s two eyes provide information about how deep and/or far away something is. |
| monocular cues | Powerful depth cues available from the image in one eye, either the right or the left |
| Familiar size and relative size | This cue to the depth and distance of objects is based on what we have learned from experience about the standard sizes of objects. |
| Height in the field of view | All other things being equal, objects positioned higher in a picture are seen as farther away. Linear perspective: Objects that are farther away take up less space on the retina. So, things that appear smaller are perceived to be farther away |
| Overlap | We perceive an object that partially conceals or overlaps another object as closer |
| Shading | This cue involves changes in perception due to the position of the light and the position of the viewer. Consider an egg under a desk lamp. If you walk around the desk, you will see different shading patterns on the egg. |
| Texture gradient | Texture becomes denser and finer the farther away it is from the viewer |
| apparent movement | The perception that a stationary object is moving |
| perceptual constancy | The recognition that objects are constant and unchanging even though sensory input about them is changing |
| Size constancy | the recognition that an object remains the same size even though the retinal image of the object changes |
| Shape constancy | the recognition that an object retains the same shape even though its orientation to you changes |
| Color constancy | the recognition that an object retains the same color even though different amounts of light fall on it. For example, if reach for an apple, it looks green to you whether you are having it for lunch or dinner |
| Pitch | the perceptual experience of the frequency of a sound, whether it is high like a whistle or low like a bass horn. We perceive high-frequency sounds as having a high pitch, and low-frequency sounds as having a low pitch |
| amplitude | the amount of pressure the sound wave produces relative to a standard. The typical standard, 0 dB, is the weakest sound the human ear can detect |
| Loudness | the perception of the sound wave’s amplitude |
| Timbre | the tone saturation, or the perceptual quality, of a sound. |
| outer ear | The outermost part of the ear, consisting of the pinna and the external auditory canal. |
| middle ear | The part of the ear that channels and amplifies sound through the eardrum, hammer, anvil, and stirrup to the inner ear |
| inner ear | The part of the ear that includes the oval window, cochlea, and basilar membrane and whose function is to convert sound waves into neural impulses and send them to the brain. |
| basilar membrane | lines the inner wall of the cochlea and runs its entire length. It is narrow and rigid at the base of the cochlea but widens and becomes more flexible at the top. |
| hair cells | the sensory receptors of the ear |
| place theory | Theory on how the inner ear registers the frequency of sound, stating that each frequency produces vibrations at a particular spot on the basilar membrane |
| frequency theory | Theory on how the inner ear registers the frequency of sound, stating that the perception of a sound’s frequency depends on how often the auditory nerve fires |
| volley principle | Principle addressing limitations of the frequency theory of hearing, stating that a cluster of nerve cells can fire neural impulses in rapid succession, producing a volley of impulses |
| auditory nerve | The nerve structure that receives information about sound from the hair cells of the inner ear and carries these neural impulses to the brain’s auditory areas |
| The sound reaching one ear is more intense than the sound reaching the other ear for two reasons | (1) It has traveled less distance, and (2) the other ear is in what is called the sound shadow of the listener’s head, which provides a barrier that reduces the sound’s intensity |
| What three senses make up the cutaneous senses? | touch, temperature, and pain. |
| thermoreceptors | Sensory nerve endings under the skin that respond to changes in temperature at or near the skin and provide input to keep the body’s temperature at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit |
| There are two types of thermoreceptors: | warm and cold. Warm thermoreceptors = warming and cold thermoreceptors respond to the cooling of the skin. When warm and cold receptors that are close to each other in the skin are stimulated simultaneously, we experience the sensation of hotness |
| prostaglandins | fatty acids that stimulate the receptors and cause the experience of pain |
| Two different neural pathways transmit pain messages to the brain: | a fast pathway and a slow pathway |
| fast pathway | fibers connect directly with the thalamus and then to the motor and sensory areas of the cerebral cortex. The fast pathway may serve as a warning system, providing immediate information about an injury |
| slow pathway | pain information travels through the limbic system, a detour that delays the arrival of info at the cerebral cortex by seconds. The nagging pain may function to remind the brain that an injury has occurred and that we need to restrict normal activity |
| papillae | Rounded bumps above the tongue’s surface that contain the taste buds, the receptors for taste. |
| olfactory epithelium | The lining of the roof of the nasal cavity, containing a sheet of receptor cells for smell. |
| kinesthetic senses | Senses that provide information about movement, posture, and orientation |
| vestibular sense | Sense that provides information about balance and movement |
| semicircular canals | Three fluid-filled circular tubes in the inner ear containing the sensory receptors that detect head motion caused when an individual tilts or moves the head and/or the body. |
| Proprioceptive drift | refers to the perception that something other than our actual body “belongs” to us and is part of our body |
Created by:
JoshuaB5