Question

MCAT Psychology Tutorial: Sensory Processing

Answer 1

\({\bf{Basic~Terminology:}}\)
- sensory processing: intake and organization of information through senses and nervous system
- sensory receptors: cells that intake information
- sensory organs: higher cell organizations that intake information and send it to the nervous system
- absolute sensory threshold: the lowest magnitude of a stimulus that is able to be detected half of the time
- difference threshold: the smallest difference in a stimulus, compared to a baseline

- Weber's law: the magnitude of the just noticeable difference is proportional to the baseline magnitude
- sensory adaptation: after an individual has been exposed to a stimulus for a long time, their receptors will adapt to decrease the sensitivity

Answer 2

\({\bf{The~Senses:}}\)
primary: vision and hearing

Vision:
- feature detectors: detect/recognize visual stimuli
- parallel processing theory: the brain can process input in many ways at once (makes visual processing more efficient)
- Charles Bonnet syndrome: the brain produces images to compensate for visual loss
- loss of vision can have psychological and social harm such as decreased ability to find employment and limitations in usual social activities

Hearing:
- hearing loss affects adults and children differently
- in childhood it will interfere with language learning unless a child is regularly exposed to signing children and adults, as well as learning other vital language skills
- in adulthood it tends to have similar social and psychological harms as the ones associated with vision loss

Other senses:
- somatosensory system: the system that receives and processes stimuli within the body
- kinesthetic sense: identifies one's own body position and movement
- gate theory of pain: stimuli can block or otherwise interfere with pain perception
- vestibular system: controls balance and orientation

Answer 3

\({\bf{Perception:}}\) interpreting input from the senses
- perceptual constancy: an object with changing stimuli can still be interpreted as a constant object
- visual constancy/form constancy: an object with changing visual properties, such as size or shape, can still be interpreted as a constant object, ex. a person disappearing over the horizon is perceived as a person walking away rather than a person physically shrinking
- depth: how far or near an object is
> monocular: cues that can be interpreted with one eye only (size, color, details, etc.)
> binocular: cues that require two eyes to interpret (ex. depth)
- motion: requires visual and vestibular systems to interpret

\({\bf{Gestalt~Theory:}}\) the brain organizes information into patterns
> bottom-up processing: starts with smaller details and creates a bigger picture
> top-down processing: starts with larger picture and interprets lower level information as part of the bigger picture

Answer 4

Anyway, that's the end of my tutorial, I hope it was a helpful resource. Source material is the 2nd Edition Barron's Prep book for the new MCAT