CLPS 0010 Readings - Chapter 4 Flashcards
(32 cards)
What is transduction?
The process by which sensory receptors produce neural impulses when they receive physical or chemical stimulation
What is Weber’s law?
That the just noticeable different between two stimuli is based on a proportion of the original stimulus, rather than a fixed amount of difference (harder to tell difference between 5 lbs and 5 lbs 1 0z, vs 1 oz and 2 oz)
What is signal detection theory?
Detecting a stimulus required making a judgment about its presence or absence based on a subjective interpretation of ambiguous information
What is response bias?
A participant’s tendency to report detecting the signal in an ambiguous trial
What is sensory adaptation?
A decrease in sensitivity to a constant level of stimulation: adapting to noise levels, etc.
What is the haptic sense?
Touch!: temperature, pressure, pain, where our limbs are; tactile stimulation
How do fast and slow fibers differ in pain reception?
Fast fibers register sharp, fast pain; slow fibers register duller, diffuse pain
What is the beginning of the middle ear?
The eardrum
What are ossicles?
The anvil, hammer, and stirrup in the middle ear that are vibrated when the eardrum vibrates
What is the oval window?
Membrane from the middle ear to inner ear (cochlea) that picks up vibrations from the ossicles
What is the cochlea?
Fluid filled tube, like a snail, ends in a membrane called the round window
What is the round window?
The membrane at the end of the cochlea
How does vibration from the oval window affect the cochlea?
Produces pressure waves in the cochlear fluid that vibrate the basilar membrane, which bends hair cells, sending info to the auditory nerve
How is light passed through the eye?
Passes through the cornea, which focuses the light; the through the lens, which bends it inward onto the retina; retina transduces light into neural signals
What is accommodation, in vision?
When the muscles behind the iris cause the pupil to contract or dilate, flattening ir ot thickening it, to focus on further/closer objects
What is the responsiveness difference between rods and cones?
Rods respond to low levels of light, primarily for night vision; cones support color vision and high illumination/detail
What is the fovea?
An area near the retina’s center where cones are densely packed
What is the difference on placement of rods/cones in the eye?
Cones are packed towards the center, in the fovea; rods are more populous around the edges of the retina
What are the three kinds of cells in the retina that help the visual system process the info that was just transduced by the rods/cones?
Bipolar, amacrine, and horizontal cells
What do the bipolar, amacrine, and horizontal cells converge to?
Ganglion cells
What are ganglion cells in the eye?
The first neurons in the visual pathway with axons: first to generate action potentials to the thalamus/optic nerve
What is the trichromatic theory?
How color vision results from activity in three different types of cones that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light
What is the opponent-process theory?
How some colors appear to be opposites, like red and green, due to ganglionic processing: certain kinds of cones (S, M, L) excite or inhibit the neurons
What is subtractive color mixing?
When mixing color occurs within the stimulus itself; physical, not psychological; like mixing paint: the different wavelengths “absorb” each other
