Barron's: Chapter 4 - Sensation and Perception Flashcards
1
Q
Transduction
A
- signals that are transformed into neural impulses
2
Q
Sensory adaption
A
- decreasing responsiveness to stimuli due to constant stimulation
3
Q
Sensory habituation (also called perceptual adaptation)
A
- our perception of sensations is partially due to how focused we are on them
4
Q
Cocktail-party phenomenon
A
- if you are talking with a friend and someone across the room says your name, your attention will probably involuntarily switch across the room
5
Q
Sensation
A
- the activation of our senses (eyes, ears, and so on)
6
Q
Perception
A
- the process of understanding these sensations
7
Q
Energy senses
A
- vision, hearing, and touch
- gather energy in the form of light, sound waves, and pressure
8
Q
Chemical senses
A
- taste and smell
9
Q
Vision
A
- dominant sense in human beings
- people use vision more than any other sense to gather information about their environment
10
Q
Cornea
A
- protecting covering of eye
11
Q
Pupil
A
- the muscles that control the pupil (iris) open it (dilate) to let more light in and also make it smaller to let less light in
12
Q
Lens
A
- curved and flexible in order to focus the light
13
Q
Retina
A
- image we see projected on retina
- like a screen on the back of your eye
14
Q
Feature detectors
A
- are individual neurons—or groups of neurons—in the brain which code for perceptually significant stimuli.
15
Q
Optic nerve
A
- sends impulses to a specific region in the thalamus called the later geniculate nucleus (LGN)
16
Q
Occipital lobe
A
- visual cortex in it
- some researchers say that sensation ends and perception begins
17
Q
Visible light
A
- the wavelengths that are visible to most human eyes
18
Q
Rods and cones
A
- cones: activated by color
- rods: responds to black and white
19
Q
Fovea
A
- contains the highest concentration of cones
20
Q
Blind spot
A
- the sport where the optic nerve leaves the retina
21
Q
Trichromatic theory
A
- hypothesizes that we have three types of cones in the retina: cones that detect the different colors blue, red, and green
22
Q
Color blindness
A
- two types: dichromatic and monochromatic
23
Q
Afterimages
A
- an impression of a vivid sensation (especially a visual image) retained after the stimulus has ceased
24
Q
Opponent-process theory
A
- states that the sensory receptors arranged int he retina come in pairs
25
Q
Hearing
A
- the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations, changes in the pressure of the surrounding medium through time, through an organ such as the ear
26
Q
Sound waves
A
- created by vibrations, which travel through the air, and are then collected by our ears