Chapter 5 - Sensation & Perception Flashcards
(38 cards)
What is transduction?
The processing of sensory stimulus by the brain
What is audition?
sense of hearing
What is gustation?
sense of taste
What is vestibular sense?
sense of balance
What is proprioception?
sense of body position
What is kinesthesia?
sense of body movement
What is nociception?
sense of pain
What is thermoception?
sense of temperature
What is olfaction?
sense of smell
What is the absolute threshold?
minimum amount of stimulus required to be detected 50% of the time
Just Noticeable Difference (JND) is also known as?
difference threshold
What is the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) a.k.a. the difference threshold?
how much difference in stimuli is required to detect a difference between them. (e.g. phone screen lighting up in a movie theater vs. at a basketball game -> the cellphone light doesn’t change, but the difference in perception of brightness does).
Weber’s Law states
the difference threshold is a constant fraction of the original stimulus
Bottom-up processing vs. top-down processing?
Bottom-up processing: sensory info. from the environment driving a process.
Top-down processing: knowledge and expectation driving a process.
Sensory adaptation
not perceiving stimuli that remains constant over prolonged periods
Inattentional blindness
failure to notice something visible because attention was attending to something else
Signal detection theory
ability to identify a stimulus when it’s embedded in distractions
What is amplitude?
distance from flat to the peak of crest or trough
What is wavelength?
length between one peak to the next
What is frequency?
number of waves that pass a given point in a given period of time
What are Hertz?
cycles per second
What wavelengths make up the visible spectrum for humans?
380-740mm
What Hertz are audible to humans?
20-20000 Hz
Opponent-process theory is
some cells of the visual system are “turned off” by certain colors. (e.g. a cell associated with green would be inhibited to red)
