Psychology chap 5

Transduction is where sensory receptors produce neural impulses when they get physical or chemical impulses.It transmits this information to the brain through the connecting neurons. Difference threshold is the noticeable difference between stimuli and the minimal amount of change needed for a person to notice the difference. The difference threshold will increase if stimulus becomes more intense. Our receptors for sound are activated by changes in air pressure produce sound waves that travel into our ears. That makes our eardrums vibrate and transfers it to the occicles. From there it vibrates the oval window which causes vibrations that create waves in ear fluid. Finally it causes hairs to bend that cause firing of neurons on the basilar membrane. Psychological dimensions of color are through addictive and subtractive color the evidence of this is in the rods and cones in our brain's occipital cortex. The concept of opposite colors are based on the McCollough effect. For example if a ganglion receives input from an L cone it creates the idea red and green are opposite. A hit is when a signal is presented and a person notices. A miss would be presented but not detecting it. A false alarm is when there is no signal but a person thinks they detect one. There are biases in experiments with these tests. For example if you tell someone only ten percent will be signals they will likely report few signals even if there are many based on what they are expecting. Light becomes neural signals in the occipital cortex. It is goes through the rods, which respond to low light levels seeing black or white, to the cones, which respond to high light level producing color, and finally to the primary visual cortex. The evidence of our being able to perceive color is based on subtractive and additive color mixing. Subtractive is the physical process that happens within the stimulus. Additive is where lights of a different wave length are percieved by the eye. We have depth perseption because of biocular and monocular cues. Biocular is how our view are different based on the distance of the object from our eyes. Monocular is the things you can see with just one eye. According to our book brain imaging studies have confirmed that brain regions in the upper pathway activate by tasks that require disisions about spacial relationships between objects. The lower regions though are activated by tasks involving identifying.