Psychology Chapter 5
HEARING Audition Amplitude Frequency Pitch Decibels
-Audition: Hearing (measured in terms of loudness): transform air pressure waves into neural messages. -Amplitude: Height from peak to trough; determines intensity of colors and sounds. -Frequency: Number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given period of time (second) -Pitch: how high or low the tone is; depends on frequency: Long wave, low frequency, low pitch; Short wave, high frequency, high pitch. -Decibels: measuring unit for sound energy; absolute threshold is 0 decibels; 60 decibels for normal conversation; prolonged over 85 causes hearing loss.
Cornea Pupil Iris Lens Accommodation Retina Rods Cones
-Cornea: Outer covering of eye; light enters eye through here, protects the eye and bends light to provide focus. -Pupil: Adjustable opening in center of eye through which light enters (more like a hole that dilates or widens). -Iris: Ring of colored muscle that is around pupil; controls size of pupil opening (dilates and constricts to changing light intensity. -Lens: Curved; bends light, transparent structure behind pupil that changes shape to help focus images on retina (If not, blurry images) -Accommodation: eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on retina. -Retina: Light sensitive inner surface on which images are focused; made of rods and cones and other cells that process info; if damaged, you can't see. -Rods: Let you see in black and white; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision. (Cats have more rods than cones) -Cones: Let you see in color; detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations. Cluster around fovea.
VISUAL INFORMATION PROCESSING Feature Detector Parallel Processing Blindsight
-Feature Detector: Nerve cells that allow us to (that respond to) detect color, shape, angle, movement, motion, depth. -Parallel Processing: When you process visual scene into sub dimensions at the same time: color, shape, angle, movement, motion, depth: Multitasking brain of visual info processing. -Blindsight: Perceptually blind but can still correctly respond to some forms of visual stimuli.
Ganglion Cells Bipolar Cells Fovea Optic Nerve Optic Chiasm Blind Spot Acuity Nearsighted Farsighted
-Ganglion Cells: Light hits retina, goes into ganglion (gangly and all legs) and goes to bipolar cells. -Bipolar Cells: Go both ways: Toward ganglion to get light and toward rods and cones. -Fovea: Retina's central focal point; around which cones cluster. -Optic Nerve: Nerve that carries neural impulses (what you saw) from the eye to the brain; where transduction occurs: from light energy to neural energy). -Optic chiasm: Where left and right optic nerves intersect; half of each nerve's axons enter opposite visual area of thalamus. -Blind Spot: Point at which optic nerve leaves eye (no more receptor cells when optic nerve leaves eye). -Acuity: Sharpness of vision. -Nearsighted: Distant objects' light rays are focused to the front of retina; near objects are perceived more clearly than far objects. -Farsighted: Light rays from nearby objects come into focus behind the retina; far away objects perceived more clearly.
Outer Ear: Eardrum, Auditory Canal Middle Ear Inner Ear: Cochlea, Oval Window, Basilar Membrane
-Outer Ear: Channels sound waves through auditory canal to eardrum. Eardrum is a tight membrane that receives waves of sound and vibrates; thin pressure of tissue that can break with quick change of pressure. Auditory Canal: where the sound waves pass through on the way to the middle ear. -Middle Ear: Between eardrum and cochlea, containing the 3 tiniest bones in the body: hammer, anvil, stirrup that relay the eardrum's vibrations thru oval window into cochlea. -Inner Ear: Has cochlea, semicircular canals, oval window, basilar membrane, vestibular sacs. Cochlea is coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube; sound waves/vibrations pass thru and cause nerve impulses; where transduction for hearing occurs. Oval Window: the cochlea's membrane; vibrates when eardrum's vibrations pass through. Basilar membrane: inner hair cells in cochlea; ripples when incoming vibrations cause cochlea's membrane to vibrate and jostle fluid; hair cells bend when basilar membrane ripples; how the inner hair vibrate affects how we hear it.
Place Theory Frequency Theory Volley Principle Stereophonic Hearing Conduction Hearing Loss Sensorineural hearing loss Cochlear Implant
-Place Theory: Links the pitch with the place in the cochlea's membrane that was stimulated. (Hermann von Helholtz). -Frequency Theory: rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, allowing us to sense its pitch. -Volley Principle: Neural cells alternate firing so they can achieve combined frequency more than 1000 per second. -Stereophonic Hearing: three dimensional hearing; left ears hear sounds from left; to localize. -Conduction hearing loss: Caused by damage to mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea. -Sensorineural Hearing loss: (nerve deafness) caused by damage to cochlea's hair cell receptors or auditory nerves; cause by loud music and aging; hair cells in basilar membrane lies down flat and not come back up. -Cochlear Implant: electronic device that turns sounds into electrical signals and send some sound info to brain (wired in cochlea's nerves).
Psychophysics Absolute Threshold Signal Detection Theory Subliminal Threshold Priming Difference Threshold Weber's Law Sensory Adaptation
-Psychophysics: Relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli (intensity of smell of perfume) and how we experience it psychologically (if you like/dislike it). -Absolute Threshold: Minimum stimulation needed to detect particular stimulus 50% of time (see candle form 100 yards away, smell drop of perfume in bucket of water). -Signal Detection Theory: Predicts how often you detect presence of faint stimulus amid background stimulus. Assumes no absolute threshold and that detection depends on personal experience, expectations, motivation, alertness. Measured in hits and misses (false alarms) -Subliminal Threshold: Right below threshold conscious awareness. -Priming: Unconscious activation of certain associations, predisposing one's perception, memory, response. -Difference Threshold: Also called Just Noticeable Difference (jnd); minimum difference needed between 2 stimuli required for detection 50% of time. (Varies from person to person) -Weber's Law: To notice a difference, 2 stimuli must differ by a constant percentage (rather than constant amount). -Sensory Adaptation: Diminished sensitivity to stimulation due to constant stimulation: adapt and no longer feel.
Sensation Perception Bottom-Up Processing Top-Down Processing Prosopagnosia
-Sensation: How sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. -Perception: How we organize and interpret sensory info enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and environments. (Interpretation varies from person to person). -Bottom-Up Processing: Analysis that begins with sensory receptors and works up to brain's integration of sensory info (You have NO previous experience) -Top-Down Processing: Info processing guided by higher-level mental processes: Construct perceptions from experience and expectations (You have prior knowledge) -Prosopagnosia: inability to recognize faces as a result of brain damage. Can have complete vision (complete sensation) but incomplete perception doesn't let her interpret what she sees.
Transduction Electromagnetic Spectrum Wavelength Hue Intensity Amplitude
-Transduction: Eye transforms one form of energy to another (light to neural messages). -Electromagnetic spectrum: Physical property of waves; Bluish: high frequency, short wavelength; Reddish: long wavelength and low frequency; Small amplitude: dull; Great amplitude: bright. -Wavelength: distance from peak to peak of one light wave to next. -Hue: color shades. -Intensity: brightness as amount of energy (amplitude). -Amplitude: height from peak - trough; determine intensity of color.
TOUCH Pain Gate-Control theory Pain Control
-When your hands are cold and water is warm, water feels like burning because nerves didn't have time to adjust. Feel pressure, warmth, cold, pain. -Pain: Psychological influences: our cultural, biology, memory of pain. Biological influences: Activity in spinal cord's large and small fibers; genetic differences in endorphin production; brain's interpretation of CNS activity. Psychological influences: attention to pain, learning based on experience expectations. Social-cultural influences: presence of theirs;, empathy for other's pain, cultural expectations. -Gate-Control Theory: Spinal cord has a neurological "gate" that block/allow pain messages to pass on to brain. Opened by pain signals moving up in larger small nerve fibers. You don't feel pain until you see the effect because spinal cord thought it wasn't necessary. -Pain Control: Physically: Take medication but body will get used to it and not fix. Psychologically: Breathing techniques, distract, divide attention.
COLOR VISION Young-Helmholtz trichromatic Additive Color Mixing Subtractive Color Mixing Opponet Process Theory
Color Vision -Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (3 color) theory: Retina has 3 types of color receptors, each especially sensitive to one of 3 colors (red, green, blue) -Additive Color Mixing: Process adding wavelengths and thus increasing light (mixing lights: red, green, blue make white light). -Subtractive Color Mixing: Subtracts wavelengths from reflected lights (mixing paint: more paints, fewer wavelengths). -Opponent Process Theory: We see in opposing retinal processes (red v. green; yellow v. blue; white v. black); enable color vision. Afterimages: after looking at a color for a while, you see its opponent color red when you look at white paper)
SMELL KINESTHEITC SENSE What it is Vestibular Sense
Smell (olfaction) -Chemical sense; doesn't register in thalamus, registers in olfactory bulb which gets sent to olfactory nerve. Women have stronger sense of smell and taste to prevent making baby sick. Kinesthetic sense (body movement) -System for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts. Not understanding your body position in other environments. -Vestibular Sense: Controlled by semicircular canals. Sense of body position and balance. With vertigo, the fluid in the semicircular won't stay steady.
TASTE Taste Buds Taste Sensations Sensory Interaction
Taste (gustation) -Taste buds vary from person to person: a lot are supertasters; fewer are non tasters (so they put a lot of flavoring). Is a chemical sense. -4 taste sensation: Sweet, sour, salty, bitter. With age, sense decreases, if you take a lot of medicine, decrease. Umami is an Asian term, meaning flavor, almost savory. -Sensory interaction: one sense influences another (smell on taste).