Sensation and perception Flashcards
(18 cards)
What is sensation?
The physiological process involving sensory receptors detecting raw stimuli from the environment.
Sensation allows our brains to take in information via our five senses, which can then be experienced and interpreted by the brain.
What are the three distinct processes involved in sensation?
- Reception
- Transduction
- Transmission
These processes include the detection of physical stimuli, conversion of energy into neural signals, and delivery of neural information to the brain.
Define reception in the context of sensation.
The presence of physical stimuli is detected by sensory neurons in our sense organs.
This involves the stimulation of sensory receptor cells.
Define transduction in the context of sensation.
Converting the energy of the stimulus into electro-chemical energy (neural signals).
This is a critical step in the sensation process.
What is transmission in the context of sensation?
The delivering of neural information to the brain for processing.
This step occurs after transduction.
What is perception?
The psychological process of organising and interpreting sensory stimuli so that it is meaningful.
Perception involves making sense of sensory information.
What are the three distinct processes involved in perception?
- Selection
- Organisation
- Interpretation
These processes help us filter and make sense of sensory information.
Define selection in the context of perception.
The brain filters the stimuli selecting important features for further processing while ignoring unimportant features.
Feature detectors are involved in this process.
What does organisation refer to in perception?
The stimuli that an individual chooses to attend to is arranged into patterns that are meaningful and easy to understand.
This involves using mental structures to assign meaning.
What is interpretation in the context of perception?
The assignment of meaning to sensory information based on personal factors.
This stage is subjective and influenced by values, experiences, beliefs, and needs.
What is perceptual expectancy?
A readiness to respond in a certain way because previous experience has prepared you to see what you expect to see.
This concept explains how past experiences can shape perception.
Explain selective attention.
The process of focusing on a particular object in the environment for a certain period of time.
This helps us tune out unimportant details.
What is divided attention?
Where mental effort must be divided between two or more tasks or stimuli at the same time.
An example of this is driving a car.
What is the Cocktail Party Effect?
Our capacity to filter out noise in the background to focus on a single stimulus.
Coined by Colin Cherry in 1953.
What did Colin Cherry study in his experiments on the Cocktail Party Effect?
Listeners’ ability to select target speech while ignoring other sounds.
His experiments involved presenting messages to separate ears.
What did Cherry’s experiments reveal about unattended information?
People absorbed very little information from the conversations they rejected.
Participants often failed to notice changes in the unattended message.
What physical differences can help in selecting auditory stimuli?
- Differences in the sex of the speaker
- Voice intensity
- Location of the speaker
These differences aid in focusing attention on a particular message.
True or False: Unattended auditory information receives significant processing.
False
Unattended information is processed very little.
