Module 3 - PSY100

• Sensation - activation of the sense organs by a source of physical energy.
• Perception - sorting out, interpretation, analysis, and integration of stimuli carried out by the sense organs and brain.
• Stimulus - any passing source of physical energy that produces a response in a sense organ.
• specialized cells of sensory system - sensory receptors
• respond to environmental stimuli and typically generate action potentials in adjacent sensory neurons - sensory receptors
• process of sensing the environment - transduction
• Absolute threshold - the minimum amount of stimulation needed for an observer to notice a stimulus.
• Signal detection theory - people make a judgement about whether a stimulus is present or absent.
• vision - humans and other animals respond to animals
• receptors in the human eye are tuned to detect only a very restricted portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, from roughly 400 to 700 nm.
• cornea - a tough, transparent tissue covering the front of the eyeball.
• part of the eye where light enters - cornea
• light passes through a chamber of fluid - aqueous humor
• aqueous humor - this supplies oxygen and other nutrients to the cornea and lens
• an opening in the center of the iris - pupil
• this is where light travels - pupil
• accommodation - the lens flattens for distant objects and becomes more rounded or spherical for closer objects
• vitreous humor - a light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye that transduces light into visual sensations.
• retina - receives a constant flow of images as people turn their heads and eyes or move through space.
• sound waves - rhythmic pulsations of acoustic energy (sound) spread outward from the vibrating object.
• air flows into the olfactory epithelium, where hundreds of different types of receptors respond to various kinds of molecules, producing complex smells.
• sensitive to molecules soluble in saliva - taste or gustation
• three senses of touch - pressure, temperature, and pain
• Proprioceptive senses - provide information about the bodyʼs position and movement.
• Vestibular sense - provides information on the position of the body in space by sensing gravity and movement.
• Kinaesthesia - provides information about the movement and position of the limbs and other parts of the body relative to one another.
• functions of parietal lobe - touch perception, movement control, and manipulation of objects
• Perceptual organization - integrates sensations into meaningful units, locates them in space, tracks their movement and preserves their meaning as the perceiver observes them from different vantage points.
• form perception - organization of sensations into meaningful shapes and patterns
• four kinds of perception - depth perception, motion perception, perceptual constancy, perceptual interpretation
• two types of processing - top-down and bottom-up
• top-down processing - uses higher-level cognitive processes, such as expectations and prior knowledge to influence the interpretation of incoming stimuli
• top-down processing - the process of receiving information from the environment and using it to guide our actions
• top-down processing - involves using pre-existing mental models to guide perception and understanding
• top-down processing - allows individual to make sense of ambiguous o incomplete sensory inputs by inferring missing details
• bottom-up processing - the process of taking in information from the environment and using it to make sense of the world
• bottom-up processing - the analysis of individual sensory stimuli or features
• bottom-up processing - taking in raw sensory information from the environment and processing it without relying on prior knowledge or expectations
• bottom-up processing - this approach focuses on the elemental details of sensory input and gradually builds up to higher-level perception and understanding
• Consciousness - the subjective awareness of mental events, is easier to describe than to define.