Sensory and Perception
By: Denisse AND Emily
Difference between Sensory and Perception
Scenario: If you are looking at a painting in the museum and consider why the artist may have chosen a certain title, OR wonder why the facial expressions in the painting look angry, or scared; what type of processing occurs?
- The two types of processing are Bottom-Up and Top-Down. This is scenario is an example of Top-Down Processing because it is driven by the data.
Selective Attention
Distracted Driving
Inattention Blindness:
Change Blindness:
Weber's Law:
Sensory Adaptation:
Absolute Threshold
- The absolute threshold is the point where something becomes noticeable to our senses. It is the softest sound we can hear or the slightest touch we can feel. Anything less than this goes unnoticed. The absolute threshold is therefore the point at which a stimuli goes from undetectable to detectable to our senses.
Difference Threshold
Professions
Marketing Specialists, medical professionals, soldiers, and airport security all look for patterns. They used daily their absolute threshold ability.
Signal Detection Theory
- This concept is referred to as signal detection because we attempt to detect what we want to focus on and ignore or minimize everything else. An example could be when you are talking to your friend in the cafeteria, we are focusing our attention on our friend and ignoring the mass information entering our senses.
Basic Anatomy of the Eye
Cornea- clear outer portion that all light must pass through to enter the eye
Pupil- hole in the center of the iris which light passes through
Iris- the colored part of the eye, acts as a diaphragm to the pupil opening
Retina- light sensing area of the eye, contains rods and cones
Optic nerve- nerve connected to the back of the eye that transmits impulses to the brain
Lens- clear piece behind the cornea that focuses light
Rods and Cones
- Rods are responsible for vision at low light levels.
- The cones are active at higher light levels- capable of color vision.
Prosopagnosia
Also known as "face blindness" is a neurological disorder characterized by the inability to recognize faces.
Prosopagnosia is thought to be the result of abnormalities, damage, or impairment in the right fusiform gyrus, a fold in the brain that appears to coordinate the neural systems that control facial perception and memory. Prosopagnosia can result from stroke, traumatic brain injury, or certain neurodegenerative diseases.
For patients with prosopagnosia is harder for them to socialize, it could affect their career and could lead to depression.
Place Theory
Ex: Motorcycle getting closer and closer has greater sound waves.
Ear Functions
Inner ear- The cochlea converts fluid waves to nerve impulses. It also detects head movement and linear acceleration.
Tinnitus:
Negative Effects of Noise Pollution on Health:
-#1 cause of hearing loss
-Coronary Artery Disease
-High Blood Pressure
Negative Effects Of Noise Pollution on Psychological Health:
-stress-related health conditions such as migraine, colitis, ulcers and decreased sleep and sleep quality
-emotional problems
-mental fatigue
-anxiety
-aggression
-decreased helpful behavior
-reduced motivation and task performance
-impaired cognitive development in children
Gestalt psychology:
Interposition
A visual signal that an object is closer than the ones behind it because the closer object covers part of the farther object.
- For example, you know that your book is closer than your desk because you see the desk around the book.
Linear Perspective
A visual term that refers to the eye's sense of depth and distance perception. This is why roads appear to narrow with distance.
Perceptual Constancy
The tendency to see familiar objects as having standard shape, size, colour, or location regardless of changes in the angle of perspective, distance, or lighting.
Recognizing a friend after a long time is and example of perceptual constancy because even though some of his/her physical features change you are still able to recognize him/her.
Perceptual Set
Our tendency to interpret things in certain ways based on previous experiences.
Visual Cliff Experiment
In the 1960s, psychologists Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk performed the famous Visual Cliff Experiment. They tested when the development of depth perception occurred in infants by placing them near what seemed to be a sudden drop and having their mothers call for them. Almost all the 6 to 9 month old babies refused to cross the visual cliff, even to reach their mothers. This experiment shows that depth perception is something learned in the later months of infancy but not something that infants are born with, suggesting training rather than maturation.
Retinal Disparity
The brain combines the two images from each eye into one using binocular cues. Retinal Disparity is the slight difference between the images received by each eye.
Strabismus
Extrasensory Perception
Argument for ESP
Argument Against ESP
Fundamentally ESP goes against everything we know about the set rules of the universe. These are laws that have been proven by countless experiments. There has been no indisputable scientific proof to support these extraordinary claims.
Parapsychology: Good or Bad?
Subliminal Experiment
Work Cited
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