Chapter 6 Flashcards
(24 cards)
What is perception?
The brain makes sense out of the input from sensory organs.
What is sensation?
The brain receives input from the sensory organs.
Top-down processing
Using models, ideas, and expectations to interpret sensory information
Bottom-up processing
Taking sensory information and then assembling and integrating it.
The process of sensation.
Reception, transduction, transmission.
Absolute threshold
Minimum level of stimulus intensity needed to detect a stimulus half the time
Difference threshold
The minimum difference for a person to be able to detect the difference half the time.
Perceptual set
What we expect to see influences what we do see. (Example of top-down processing)
Subliminal detection
Below our threshold for being able to consciously detect a stimulus
Wavelength/frequency
Wavelength determines color. Shorter wavelengths are bluish colors and longer wavelengths are reddish colors. The shorter the wavelength, the greater the frequency.
Height/amplitude
Height/amplitude determines the brightness of a color. The greater the height/amplitude the brighter the color. The smaller the height/amplitude the duller the color.
The blind spot
The place in the eye where there are no receptor cells at the place where the optic nerve leaves the eye.
Rods
Rods help us see black and white in our peripheral view and in the dark. There are 20x more rods than cones.
Cones
Cones help us see sharp colorful details in bright lights. There are fewer cones than there are rods.
Color blindness
People missing red or green cones have trouble differentiating red from green.
Young-helmholtz trichromatic theory
There are three types of color receptor cones, red, green, and blue. All colors we perceive are created by light waves stimulating combinations of these cones.
Gestalt
Meaningful pattern/configuration, forming a “whole”
Figure
Objects and figures against a background
Ground
The area that objects and figures are placed against.
Grouping
Grouping visual information into wholes through one of three ways. Proximity, continuity, or closure.
Laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants
Visual cliff. (Crib with a glass screen to walk across)
Monocular cue of linear perspective and interposition.
The flowers in the distance seem farther away because the rows converge. Our brain reads this as a sign of distance.
Perceptual constancy
Our ability to see objects as appearing the same under different lighting conditions, at different distances and angles.
The Ames room
A room designed to manipulate distance cues to make two same sized people appear very different in size.
