Psych Module 4

Opponent-process theory

Concerning color perception. Blue light stimulates S-cones, yellow light does not stimulate S-cones. this means that an inactive S-cone would indicate that it is being exposed to yellow light.

Petra walks into a brightly lit psychology lab to participate in an experiment involving the ability to perceive the colors of the rainbow. Which photoreceptors will be most useful during this experiment?

Cones

Absolute threshold

Constant How intense does a stimulus need to be before you can just detect/become aware of it? The minimum amount of stimulation required to be able to sense/perceive it 50% of the time.

Binocular cues

Cues involving both eyes

If you close one eye, you will still be able to use _______________ as a depth cue, but you will not be able to use ____________ as a depth cue.

Disparity; linear perspective

False positive:

Do NOT include in study

When you watch the teacher at the front of the room, you are easily able to distinguish her from the white board (or chalk board) behind her. This demonstrates the Gestalt principle of _____________.

Figure ground segmentation

Correct rejection:

Good! Include in study Is true but not believed

Retinal/binocular disparity

Helps us determine how far away an object is.

Susan is trying to think just what she will wear on Saturday. She decides upon a navy blue skirt paired with a bright orange sweater. What a wonderful combination. The ability for both Susan and you to perceive the different colors between her skirt and top result from:

The difference in the wavelength of the lightwaves being reflected off the two items of clothing

Weber's law

The difference threshold increases as the stimulus becomes more intense. The difference threshold increases as the stimulus becomes more intense. So, if you start with a very weak stimulus, only a small change in stimulation is required to notice the change. But, if you start with a very intense stimulus however, a much larger change in stimulation is required to notice the change.

threshold

The endpoint of a range: The point where we go from being able to send some thing to not being able to send some thing. Example: The point at which a sound could become so quiet that you could no longer hear it: The point where you go from hearing the sound to not hearing the sound is the threshold

Visual pathways

The pathway from the retina to the primary visual cortex contains the information we consciously experience as seeing. This is the first area of the cerebral cortex to receive any visual information. More in photos

The blindspot

Where your optic nerve connects to your retina, there are no photoreceptors. You do not consciously see the Blindspot, however, your visual perceptual system fills it in.

Perceiving depth

Based on perception not sensation

Each eye sees more of the world on its own side of the visual field. A combination of the views from the two eyes provides humans with an adaptive advantage by creating a broader panorama of the scene. It also creates the depth cue of

Binocular disparity

Taj wants to create a robot that has sensation but not perception. The robot should

detect external energy sources but not interpret them.

Sensory absolute threshold

When you can just start to detect the presence of a stimulus with sensory receptors

Seeing color: amplitude and wavelength

Amplitude to sound (lower amp. to quieter sounds) Wavelength to color (shorter to blue, longer to red) More in photos

Subliminal stimuli

Are those below the threshold. If a stimulus is subliminal to the sensory absolute threshold, it cannot be sensed or perceived. If a stimulus is subliminal to the perceptual absolute threshold, it cannot be perceived, but it may be able to be sensed.

Supraliminal stimuli

Are those that are above the threshold. If a stimulus is supraliminal to the sensory absolute threshold, it can be sensed but may not yet perceived. If a stimulus is supraliminal to the perceptual absolute threshold it can be both sensed and perceived.

Sarit is at a bar full of music, chatter, and laughter. He gets involved in an interesting conversation with a woman named Mona, and he tunes out all the background noise. Sarit's friend, Karen, taps him on the shoulder and asks what song just played on the jukebox. Sarit says he doesn't know, even though he is sitting right next to the jukebox and is familiar with popular music. This illustrates the role that ________________ plays in what is sensed versus what is perceived.

Attention

For some reason, you are standing in a corn field late at night. Why you are there, does not matter. What does matter is that you just saw a pattern of blinking lights go across the night sky. You immediately run back into town and regale everyone you can find with stories of UFOs and aliens who are coming to invade the planet. Everyone else laughs you off and claims that you didn't see what you thought you saw. Later that evening, as the aliens are lining you all up to board their spacecraft, you can feel confident that you indeed made a perceptual decision that result in a ________________ when everyone else thought you had made a __________________.

Hit; false positive

Difference threshold

How much does the intensity of a stimulus need to change before the change is noticeable? The bare minimum change in stimulation required for you to be capable to sense/perceive the change 50% of the time. Sometimes called " just noticeable difference".

Regarding visual illusions, which of the following statements is most accurate?

Illusions help reveal normal perceptual processes

Balance in inner ear

In photos

Sensation vs. perception

In photos

Patients were instructed to focus on either white or black objects that moved around the screen, disregarding the other color (if they were to focus on white, they had to disregard black and vice versa). When a red cross passed across the screen, about one third of the subjects did not notice it. This research protocol demonstrates which concept?

Inattentional blindness

Attention

Is a necessary first ingredient for perception. If we do not attend to something, we will not perceive it.

______________ amplitudes waves are associated with ______________.

Lower // quieter sounds

Change blindness

Occurs when a visual change is introduced while our vision is blocked. Example: you didn't notice the difference in Dr Gitters hair and his lecture videos because you were more focused on the content of the video.

This particular portion of the eye functions as a lens, bending light that passes through it. While it bends light to a great degree, it always bends it to the same degree as it cannot change its shape.

The cornea

Blindsight

Occurs when one of the pathways caring visual information back to the primary visual cortex is damaged. The former has been damaged, while the later remains intact. This means that they can't see anything that you place in the visual field of the damaged sensory system, but they can still make correct judgments about the movement of objects in that visual field. Blindsight patients are not aware of the movement (report not seeing it), but are able to make accurate judgments about it. This means they are sensing things, but not perceiving them fully.

Inattentional blindness

Occurs when we fail to see visual objects in the visual field because we are not attending to them. Example: not seeing a distraction in the back of what you were focusing on. Or not noticing grammatical and spelling errors because you are paying attention to what you are reading.

If you like something is:

Perception

Sensation vs. Perception

Pic in photos

Damien frequently runs into Carmen while he is walking his dog. He is puzzled because Carmen always greets his dog but never greets him until he has spoken to her. He becomes even more perplexed when Carmen says, "Oh look, there is Ryan's car," even though Ryan is standing right next to the car. You could enlighten Damien by telling him that Carmen quite likely suffers from _________________ and that while Carmen sees his face, she cannot fully perceive it.

Prosopagnosia

Signal detection theory

Recognizes that detecting a stimulus is not an objective process. Instead, it is a subjective decision that includes two components: sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of other distractions and the criteria used to make the judgment from ambitious information. IN PHOTOS (hit, miss, false positive, correct rejection)

Convergence

Refers to how cross-eyed we have to be in order to focus on the figure

Gustation (taste)

Refers to our sense of taste. Taste buds can receive five basic taste sensations: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami (savory).

Localization

Refers to where a sound is coming from. Only auditory perception can determine this, NOT sensory receptors. Interaural time difference is the difference between when a sound reaches one ear and when it reaches the other ear. Interaural intensity difference is the difference between the intensity of a sound at one ear and at the other ear.

Prosopagnosia

Sensation without perception. This is when individuals lack the ability to recognize other people by their face. These people can still see others faces and can describe them to a sketch artist, but cannot construct the face into something that they recognize.

Auditory perception: how we hear

Sound waves are a physical force - A pattern of high and low air pressure cycles - that serve as the stimulus of a series of mechanical changes that eventually lead to the action potential that causes us to hear. More in photos

Frequency perception

Temple coating: is used to encode lower frequencies Place coding: research shows that high frequency sounds peak near the base of the cochlea, while low frequency sound peak near the tip. The place coding accounts for our ability to sense frequencies greater than 4,000 Hz.

Imagine yourself in a dark classroom reading PowerPoint slides. If an audience member were to check the internet using her cell phone and causing her screen to light up, chances are that many people would notice the change in illumination in the classroom. However, if the same thing happened in a brightly lit classroom during a discussion, very few people would notice. The cell phone brightness does not change, but it's ability to be detected as a change in illumination varies dramatically between the two concepts. This is an example of ___________________.

The perceptual absolute threshold

Perceptual absolute threshold

The point would you become consciously aware of a sensory stimulus

Transduction

The process of translating physical sensory information into neural impulses. This process occurs within the sensory organs: the retina, the inner ear, your taste buds.

Olfaction (smell)

This is also a chemical sense. This does NOT project to the thalamus, instead the receptors send input to the olfactory bulb.

Haptic perception

This sense refers to our perception of touch, temperature, and pain.

Monocular cues

Those that only involve one eye. Also help us perceive distance. If you have both eyes open and you are looking at an object that exist in an environment that has depth, you are using both binocular and monocular cues. But, if you only have one eye open or are looking at an object that lacks depth (like a picture or tv screen) then you can only use monocular cues. You can still perceive depth even with only one eye open.

Which type of processing involves the interpretation of sensations and is influenced most by expectations and available knowledge?

Top-down processing

Because the brain cannot process physical stimuli directly, it must convert the stimuli into chemical and electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. This process is known as

Transduction

Vision: the eye

Transduction in the eye: In photos

As sound travels into the ear, the first physical thing that the sound wave will vibrate is the:

Tympanic membrane

Perceptual closure

We also like to perceive things as complete forms.

Perceptual grouping

We group things that are close together and/or similar to one another.

Disrupting figure ground

We tend to perceptionally extract figures from their background and focus on the foreground. Example: you can look at an image different ways and see a different picture within it (seeing either two faces, or a vase)

Adaptation

When sensory systems respond less and less to constant stimulus. Example: when you leave your sunglasses on your head and aren't able to find them or when you leave your phone in your pocket and walk into the ocean because you are used to the feeling of it being there. Example: you jump into Coldwater, but over time you get used to it. This is you experiencing sensory adaptation.

Good continuation

When there is an intersection between two or more objects, we tend to perceive each object as a single, uninterrupted one.