Ch 4 - Sensation, Attention, and Perception Flashcards
Devices that convert one kind of energy into another.
What are transducers?
Conversion of energy from the environment into a pattern of response by the nervous system.
What is sensation?
Study of how the mind interprets the physical properties of stimuli.
What is psychophysics?
Minimum amount of physical energy that can be detected 50 percent of the time.
What is the absolute threshold?
Minimum difference in physical energy between two stimuli that can be detected 50 percent of the time.
What is the difference threshold?
Colour of light, as determined by its wavelength.
What is hue?
Curved, transparent, protective layer through which light enters the eye.
What is the cornea?
Clear structure behind the pupil that bends light toward the retina.
What is the lens?
Changes in the shape of the lens of the eye to enable the seeing of close and far objects.
What is accomodation?
Having difficulty on distant objects (nearsightedness).
What is myopia?
Defects in the cornea, lens, or eye that cause some areas of vision to be out of focus.
What is astigmatism?
Farsightedness caused by aging.
What is presbyopia?
Surface at the back of the eye onto which the lens focuses light rays.
What is the retina?
Photoreceptors that are sensitive to colour.
What are cones?
Photoreceptors for dim light that produce only black and white sensations.
What are rods?
The sharpness of visual perception.
What is visual acuity?
Area in the retina where the optic nerve exits that contains no photoreceptor cells.
What is the blind spot?
Structure that conveys visual information away from the retina to the brain.
What is the optic nerve?
Tiny spot in the center of the retina, containing only cones, where visual acuity is greatest.
What is the fovea?
A total inability to perceive colour.
What is colour blindness?
An inability to distinguish some colours.
What is colour weakness?
Vision at the edges of the visual field.
What is peripheral (side) vision?
Increased light sensitivity of the eye under low-light conditions.
What is dark adaptation?
The black opening inside the iris that allows light to enter the eye.
What is the pupil?
Coloured structure on the surface of the eye surrounding the pupil.
What is the iris?
A theory of colour vision based on three cone types: red, green, and blue.
What is trichromatic theory of colour vision?
Proposition that colour vision is based on coding things as red or green, yellow or blue, or black or white.
What is opponent-process theory of colour vision?
How high or low a tone sounds; related to the frequency of a sound wave.
What is pitch?
The volume of a sound; related to the amplitude of a sound wave.
What is loudness?
Membrane that vibrates in response to sound waves and transmits them inward.
What is the eardrum?
Snail-shaped organ in the inner ear that contains sensory receptors for hearing.
What is the cochlea?
Structure in the cochlea containing hair cells that convert sound waves into action potentials.
What is the basilar membrane?
Receptor cells within the cochlea that transduce vibrations into nerve impulses.
What are hair cells?
Poor transfer of sounds from the eardrum to the inner ear.
What is conductive hearing loss?
Loss of hearing caused by damage to the inner-ear hair cells or auditory nerve.
What is sensorineural hearing loss?
Damage caused by exposing the hair cells to excessively loud sounds.
What is noise-induced hearing loss?
Proposition that pitch is decoded from the rate at which hair cells of the basilar membrane are firing.
What is the frequency theory of hearing?
Proposition that higher and lower tones excite specific areas of the cochlea.
What is the place theory of hearing?
Sense of smell.
What is olfaction?
Sense of taste.
What is gustation?
The senses of touch, pressure, pain, heat, and cold.
What are the skin senses?
The senses of body movement and positioning.
What are the kinesthetic senses?
Perception of balance, gravity, and acceleration.
What are the vestibular senses?
A theory holding that odors are related to the shapes of chemical molecules.
What is the lock-and-key theory of olfaction?
Receptor cells for taste.
What are taste buds?
Pain based on large nerve fibers; warns that bodily damage may be occuring.
What is the warning system?
Pain based on small nerve fibers; reminds the brain that the body has been injured.
What is the reminding system?
A theory proposing that pain messages pass through neural “gates” in the spinal cord.
What is gate control theory?
The process by which the brain combines information coming from multiple senses.
What is multimodal integration?
A failure to notice a stimulus because attention is focused elsewhere.
What is inattentional blindness?
A failure to notice that the background is changing because attention is focused elsewhere.
What is change blindness?
The process by which attention is withdrawn from the physical environment to focus on internal events.
What is mind-wandering?
A perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory system creates perceptual experiences in another sensory system.
What is synesthesia?
Selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory input.
What is perception?
A misleading or misconstructed perception.
What is an illusion?
Perception with no basis in reality.
What is a hallucination?
A mental model of external events.
What is perceptual construction?
Organizing perceptions by beginning with low-level features.
What is bottom-up processing?
Perception guided by prior knowledge or expectations.
What is top-down processing?
Organizing a perception so that part of a stimulus appears to stand out as an object against a less prominent background.
What is figure-ground organization?
The principle that the perceived shape of an object is unaffected by changes in its retinal image.
What is shape constancy?
The principle that the perceived size of an object remains constant, despite changes in its retinal image.
What is size constancy?
The principle that the apparent (or relative) brightness of objects remains the same so long as they are illuminated by the same amount of light.
What is brightness constancy?
Two equal-length lines tipped with inward or outward pointing Vs appear to be of different lengths.
What is the Muller-Lyer illusion?
The ability to see 3-D space and to judge distances accurately.
What is depth perception?
Features of the environment and messages from the body that supply information about distance and space.
What are depth cues?
Perceptual features that impart information about distance and 3-D space that requires two eyes.
What are binocular depth cues?
Difference between the images projected onto each eye.
What is retinal disparity?
Perception of space and depth as a result of each eye receiving different images (retinal disparity).
What is stereoscopic vision?
Degree to which the eyes turn in to focus on a close object (which tells the brain how far away the object is).
What is convergence?
Perceptual features that impart information about distance and 3-D space that require just one eye.
What are monocular depth cues?
Monocular depth cues found in paintings, drawings, and photographs that impart information about space, depth, and distance.
What are pictorial depth cues?
