Chapter 5: Sensation and Perception

sensory interaction

A food's aroma can greatly enhance its taste. This is an example of:

visual cliff

laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals

recognizing objects by sight.

After surgery to restore vision, patients who had been blind from birth had difficulty:

How do we use binocular and monocular cues to see the world in three dimensions?

Binocular cues like retinal disparity let is see things three-dimensionally and monocular cues help us judge distance.

monocular

Two examples of ________ depth cues are interposition and linear perspective.

none

Which ESP events are supported by solid, replicable scientific evidence?

depth perception

ability to see objects in three dimensions even though images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance

subliminal

below our absolute threshold for conscious awareness

perceptual adaptation

in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted vision field

parallel processing

processing of many aspects of a problem or scene at the same time; brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions including vision.

sensory adaptation

reduced sensitivity in response to constant stimulation

bright; color

Cones are the eye's receptor cells that are especially sensitive to ________ light and are responsible for our ________ vision.

What are the characteristics of energy we see as light?

Light travels in waves. Wavelength determines light energy's hue and amplitude determines light energy's brightness.

pressure

Of the four skin senses that make up our sense of touch, only ________ has its own identifiable receptor cells.

How does the ear transform sound energy into neural messages?

Sound energy begins at the outer ear where it is channeled into the auditory canal. The sound will hit the eardrum, causing it to vibrate, activating three tiny bones in the middle ear, who will then transmit the sound to the cochlea. The cochlea then vibrates, creating ripples in the cochlear fluid that bend hair cells lining the basilar membrane on the cochlea's surface. The hair cell movements trigger neural impulses and axons from those nerve cells form the auditory nerve that will carry the neural message to the brain via the thalamus.

below our absolute threshold for conscious awareness

Subliminal stimuli are:

brightness

The amplitude of a sound wave determines our perception of loudness. The amplitude of a light wave determines our perception of ________.

the optic nerve leaves the eye.

The blind spot in your retina is located where:

parallel processing

The brain's ability to process many aspects of an object or a problem simultaneously is called ________ _________.

feature detectors

The cells in the visual cortex that respond to certain lines, edges, and angles are called ________ ________.

wavelength

The characteristic of light that determines the color we experience, such as blue or green, is ________.

What are the characteristics of the air pressure waves that we hear as meaningful sounds?

The characteristics of air pressure waves we hear as meaningful sounds include amplitude or height of the sound wave, determining the loudness of the sound and frequency or length of the sound wave determining the pitch of the sound.

How does the eye transform light energy into neural messages?

The eyes transform light energy into neural messages by filtering it through the pupil and the lens and projecting it on to the retina. Burried cells in the retina called cones and rods trigger chemical changes that activate bipolar cells who send neural signals activating ganglion cells whose axons twist together to form the optic nerve. The optic nerve carries the information to the brain via the thalamus.

three types of color receptors; opponent-process cells

Two theories together account for color vision. The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory shows that the eye contains ________, and the opponent-process theory accounts for the nervous system's having ________.

sweet, salty, umami, bitter, sour; it prevented them from eating toxins and encouraged them to eat sources of energy.

We have specialized nerve receptors for detecting which five tastes? How did this ability aid our ancestors?

How do we sense our body's position and movement?

We sense our body's position and movement through kinesthesia in our muscles, joints, and tendons and our vestibular sense involving two parts in the inner ear, including a sac filled with fluid that moves when our head moves.

a constant minimum percentage

Weber's law states that for a difference to be perceived the two stimuli must differ by:

pressure, warmth, cold, and pain; pressure

What are the four basic touch sensations? Which of them has identifiable receptors?

The function of sensory adaptation is to free our minds to focus on informative changes in our environment without distraction from other stimuli.

What is the function of sensory adaptation?

Young-Helmhotz trichromatic theory and the opponent-process theory

What theories help us understand color vision?

receiving sensory stimulation, transforming that stimulation into neural impulses, and delivering the neural information to your brain

What three steps are basic to all our sensory systems?

The fluid in your inner hear has not returned to a neutral state.

Why do you feel a little dizzy immediately after a roller-coaster ride?

Kinesthesia; vestibular sense

________ is your sense of body position and movement. Your ________ ________ specifically motiros your head's movement, with sensors in the inner ear.

binocular cue

a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes

perceptual set

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

priming

activating (often unconsciously) associations in our mind, thus setting us up to perceive, remember, or respond to objects or events in certain ways

intensity

amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which influences what we perceive as brightness or loudness; determined by amplitude

gestalt

an organized whole

bottom-up processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information

retinal disparity

binocular cue for perceiving depth; comparing images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance; the greater the disparity, the closer the object

transduction

changing one form of energy into another; sensation: the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret

cochlea

coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses

extrasensory perception (ESP)

controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition`

monocular cue

depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone

cochlear implant

device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea

hue

dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light

wavelength

distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next

embodied cognition

influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments

top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

retina

light-sensitive inner surface of the eye; contains the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information

difference threshold

minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time; just noticeable difference (jnd)

absolute threshold

minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time

feature detectors

nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of a stimulus, such as edges, lines, and angles.

optic nerve

nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain

frequency

number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time

figure-ground

organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings

color constancy

perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object

perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change

opponent-process theory

theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision (red/green, blue/yellow, black/white); some cells are "turned on" by green and "turned off" by red and vice-versa.

Young-Helmhotz trichromatic theory

theory that the retina contains three different color receptors - one most sensitive to red, another to green, and another to blue; when stimulated in combination these cells can produce the perception of any color

pitch

tone's experience highness or lowness; depends on frequency

grouping

perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into meaningful groups

blind spot

point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye; this part of the retina has no receptor cells

sensory interaction

principle that one sense may influence another; ex. smell of food influences taste

Weber's law

principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount)

perception

process by which our brain organizes and interprets sensory information, transforming it into meaningful objects and events

sensation

process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment

vestibular sense

sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance; inner ear

audition

sense or act of hearing

hypnosis

social interaction in which one person responds to a suggestion by another person that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur

posthypnotic suggestion

suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotize; used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors

kinesthesia

system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts; muscles, joints, and tendons

How do absolute thresholds and difference thresholds differ, and what is Weber's law?

Absolute thresholds and difference thresholds differ in that an individual's absolute threshold is the minimums stimulation needed to detect a stimulus 50% of the time and an individual's difference threshold is the minimum difference they can detect between two stimuli. Weber's law tells us this difference is represented by a constant minimum percentage rather than a constant amount.

just noticeable difference

Another term for difference threshold is the ________ ________ ________.

judge distances

Depth perception underlies our ability to:

What roles do feature detection and parallel processing play in the brain's visual information processing?

Feature detection plays a role in the brain's visual information processing by using specialized nerve cells that respond to specific features (such as lines, edges, angles, and faces). Parallel processing plays a role in the brain's visual information processing by assigning different teams of nerve cells separate tasks of simultaneously processing all aspects of a scene at one time.

Our senses of taste and smell are similar in that they are both chemical senses.

How are our senses or taste and smell similar?

They don't hold up.

How do ESP claims hold up when put to the test by scientists?

perceptual adaptation

In experiments, people have worn glasses that turned their visual fields upside down. After a period of adjustment, they learned to function quite well. This ability is called ________ ________.

figure-ground

In listening to a concert, you attend to the solo instrument and perceive the orchestra as accompaniment. This illustrates the organizing principle of ________.

How do our expectations, assumptions, contexts, and even our motivations and emotions affect our perceptions?

Our expectations, assumptions, contexts, and even our motivations and emotions affect our perceptions by strongly influencing them based on our previous experience by perceptual set.

What influences our feelings of pain, and how can we treat pain?

Our feelings of pain are influenced by our genetics, physical characteristics, nociceptors in the skin that detect hurtful temperatures, pressure, or chemicals, our attention, our expectations, and our culture. We can treat pain with endorphins, distractions, and hypnosis.

experiences, assumptions, and expectations.

Our perceptual set influences what we perceive. This mental tendency reflects our:

How do our senses interact?

Our senses interact and influence each other such as smell and taste to produce a flavor.

grouping

Our tendencies to fill in the gaps and to perceive a pattern as continuous are two different examples of the organizing principle called ________.

perceptual constancy

Perceiving a tomato as consistently red, despite lighting shifts, is an example of:

How do perceptual constancies help us construct meaningful perceptions?

Perceptual consistencies like color and size and shape consistencies help us construct meaningful perceptions because things like color, shape, and size remain constant even though illumination or distance change.

What does research on restored vision, sensory restriction, and perceptual adaptation reveal about the effects of experience on perception?

Research on restored vision, sensory restriction, and perceptual adaptation revel that the effects of experience on perception are crucial. There appears to be a critical period for the brain to form some pathways for perception seen by studying individuals who regained sight later in life. Humans can adapt to an artificially displaced or even inverted vision field.

What are sensation and perception? What do we mean by bottom-up processing and top-down processing?

Sensation is how we use our bottom-up processing system, receiving and representing stimuli. Perception is how we use our top-down processing system of mentally organizing and interpreting sensory input.

bottom-up processing; top-down processing

Sensation is to ______ as perception is to ________.

important changes in the envrionment.

Sensory adaptation helps us focus on

perception

The process by which we organize and interpret sensory information is called _________.

cochlea

The snail-shaped tube in the inner ear, where sound waves are converted into neural activity is called the ________.

crawling infants and very young animals perceive depth.

The visual cliff experiments suggest that:

sensorineural hearing loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; nerve deafness; cannot be reversed

conduction hearing loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea