Sensory Interaction Flashcards

Sensory Interaction Concepts

• Sensory interaction refers to how one sense can influence another, demonstrated by how food's smell can affect its taste.

Eye Functionality

• Accommodation is the lens's ability to change shape for focusing on near or distant objects.
• The pupil serves as the adjustable opening in the eye, regulating light entry.
• The retina is the light-sensitive layer that initiates visual processing, containing rods and cones.

Types of Photoreceptors

• Rods detect black, white, and gray; crucial for low-light vision.
• Cones, concentrated in the retina's center, function in well-lit conditions and perceive color and detail.

Visual Processing Theories

• Young Helmholtz trichromatic theory posits three color receptors (red, green, blue) corresponding to color perception.
• Opponent processing theory suggests color vision arises from opposing retinal processes (e.g., red-green, yellow-blue).
• Bottom-up processing involves sensory receptors initiating perception, while top-down processing utilizes prior knowledge and expectations.

Auditory and Vestibular Senses

• Audition is the sense of hearing, with sound processed through the cochlea, a fluid-filled structure in the inner ear.
• The vestibular sense provides information about body position and movement, aiding balance.

Thresholds and Perception

• Absolute threshold denotes the minimum stimulus required for detection 50% of the time.
• Perception is the interpretation of sensory information, allowing recognition of meaningful objects and events.
• Subliminal stimuli are below the threshold of conscious awareness.

Pain and Attention Mechanisms

• Gate control theory explains how the spinal cord's neurological "gate" regulates pain transmission to the brain.
• Selective attention allows individuals to focus on specific stimuli amid distractions.

Frequency and Feature Detection

• Frequency theory relates to how the auditory nerve's impulse rate correlates with sound frequency, contributing to pitch perception.
• Feature detectors are specialized neural cells responding to specific stimulus features like shape or movement.

Additional Sensory Definitions

• Kinesthesis involves the sensation of individual body parts' position and movement.
• Weber's law states that the perception of difference in stimuli depends on a constant minimum percentage difference.
• Parallel processing allows simultaneous processing of multiple aspects of sensory information, contrasting with serial processing.

Visual Field Considerations

• The fovea is the central point in the retina with a high concentration of cones, optimizing visual detail.
• The blind spot occurs where the optic nerve exits the eye, marked by an absence of receptor cells.