Chapter 4:
Sensation & Perception
Sensation & Perception
Specialized cells convert mechanical sound waves in the ear and light energy in the eye into neural signals through this fundamental sensory process.
What is transduction?
Shift workers who rotate between day and night shifts feel fatigued and uncoordinated because they disrupt this internal timing system.
What is circadian rhythm?
A dog runs to the kitchen every time it hears the electric can opener because the sound has been paired with food. The sound of the can opener is this component. What is a conditioned stimulus?
What is a conditioned stimulus?
A driver receives a speeding ticket in the mail, which decreases their likelihood of speeding in the future. The ticket serves as this type of learning.
What is positive punishment?
A dog trainer sounds a high-pitched clicker every single time she offers a puppy a meat treat. After 20 consecutive repetitions, the puppy begins to drool at the sound of the clicker alone. The initial period of pairing and learning the association represents this principle of classical conditioning.
What is acquisition?
A chef notices that adding 1 teaspoon of salt to a large pot of soup doesn't change the flavor, but adding 2 teaspoons does. This smallest detectable difference in stimulation illustrates this concept.
What is the just noticeable difference?
A student suddenly experiences uncontrollable sleep attacks and collapses into sleep during a low-stress class discussion due to this disorder.
What is narcolepsy?
When a lemon wedge is placed on your tongue, your mouth automatically waters without any prior training or learning. The automatic salivation is this component.
What is an unconditioned response?
factory worker gets paid $20 for every 10 boxes they assemble, regardless of how long it takes them, reflecting this reinforcement schedule.
What is fixed-ratio?
Maya wakes up in the middle of the night completely unable to move or speak, feeling a heavy weight on her chest and seeing a shadowy, terrifying figure in the corner of her room. She later worries she was abducted by aliens, but a psychologist would explain it as this altered state of consciousness.
What is sleep paralysis?
Staring at a bright green, black, and yellow flag for 60 seconds and then looking at a blank white wall produces a red, white, and blue visual afterimage due to this color vision mechanism.
What is opponent process theory?
During a vivid nightmare, a runner dreams they are sprinting from a monster, yet their skeletal muscles remain completely paralyzed due to this stage of sleep.
What is Stage 5 (REM Sleep)?
A child who was bitten by a German Shepherd cowers around all large dogs, but acts completely calm around small Poodles, demonstrating this outcome.
What is stimulus discrimination?
An alarm chirps loudly in your car until you fasten your seatbelt, so you start putting your seatbelt on each time you get in the car and the annoying noise stops.
What is negative reinforcement?
After decades of playing loud concert venues without ear protection, a musician suffers permanent hearing loss because extreme sound waves damaged these primary auditory receptors located on the basilar membrane.
What are hair cells?
An experienced reader can easily make sense of a sentence full of scrambled letters like "I cnduo't bvleeiee taht I culod uesndtarnad waht I was rdanieg" by relying on context and prior expectations through this type of processing.
What is top-down processing?
An EEG recording during a patient's deepest stage of NREM sleep reveals high-amplitude, slow electrical activity known by this term.
What are delta waves?
A dog's conditioned response to a bell disappears after several trials without food. Seven days later, the dog suddenly salivates again upon hearing the bell due to this event.
What is spontaneous recovery?
A pigeon pecks a lever for food pellets only when a green light above the lever is turned on, but not when a red light is on. The green light signals that the food is available, serving as this type of stimulus.
A child who has never seen a strawberry before picks one up, notices its red color, seed-covered texture, and sweet aroma, and uses those basic sensory inputs to figure out what it is, rather than relying on prior knowledge through this type of processing.
What is bottom up processing?
A driver focused intently on reading a street sign fails to see a unicyclist wearing a bright yellow shirt cross right in front of their windshield due to this phenomenon.
What is inattentional blindness?
A detective attempts to hypnotize an eyewitness to retrieve forgotten crime details, but the resulting testimony is inadmissible in court due to this myth of hypnosis.
What is hypnosis enhances memory?
A dog salivates to a bell after it has been paired with food. Next, a red light is repeatedly flashed right before the bell plays (without any food present) causing the dog to eventually salivate to the red light alone through this process.
What is higher order conditioning?
A person repeatedly checks their email throughout the day, receiving a message at unpredictable time intervals regardless of how many times they refresh their inbox, reflecting this reinforcement schedule.
What is variable-interval?
Erin rides in her friend's car to school every day without trying to memorize the route. When asked to drive herself for the first time, she navigates there perfectly without any mistakes, demonstrating this type of learning.
What is Latent Learning?