Exam 1 - Chapter 1 Flashcards
7 steps of the perceptual process
existence of stimulus, creation of proximal stimulus, receptors process stimulus, neural processing, perception, recognition, action
what is not a step of the perceptual process, but affects every step of the process?
knowledge
principle of transformation
stimuli and responses created by stimuli are transformed/changed between the distal stimulus and perception
principle of representation
everything a person perceives is based not on direct contact with the stimuli but on representations of stimuli that are formed on the receptors and the resulting activity in the person’s nervous system
sensory receptors
neurons whose specific purpose is to take in stimuli from the environment to aid in perception
transduction
the transformation of environmental energy into electrical energy
primary receiving area
area of the cortex that first receives signals from a sense’s receptors, is different for every sense
four lobes of the brain
temporal, frontal, occipital, parietal
primary receiving areas for each of the 5 senses
smell: temporal, hearing: temporal, touch: parietal, sight: occipital, taste: frontal
prosopagnosia
inability to recognize faces, can describe features but have to use other information to recognize people
visual form agnosia
inability to recognize objects, can accurately describe objects but cannot correctly categorize them by purpose
top-down processing
processing that starts with the analysis of high-level information, such as the knowledge a person brings to a situation
bottom-up processing
processing that is based on the information from receptors
oblique effect
the phenomenon in which people are more easily able to identify horizontal and vertical than diagonal (oblique) lines
absolute threshold
the minimum stimulus energy necessary for an observer to detect a stimulus
