Chapter 4 Vocab Flashcards
sensation
Simple stimulation of a sense organ.
perception
The organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation.
psychophysics
Methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer’s sensitivity to that stimulus.
absolute threshold
The minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus.
just noticeable difference (JND)
The minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected.
Weber’s law
The just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity.
signal detection theory
An observation that the response to a stimulus depends both on a person’s sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person’s response criterion
sensory adaptation
Sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions.
retina
Light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball.
accommodation (eye)
The process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina.
cones
Photoreceptors that detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail.
rods
Photoreceptors that become active under low-light conditions for night vision.
fovea
An area of the retina where vision is the clearest and there are no rods at all.
blind spot
A location in the visual field that produces no sensation on the retina because the corresponding area of the retina contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light.
receptive field
The region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the firing rate of that neuron.
area V1
The part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex.
visual-form agnosia
The inability to recognize objects by sight.
binding problem
A phenomenon that concerns how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features.
illusory conjunction
A perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined.
feature integration theory
The idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus but is required to bind those individual features together.
perceptual constancy
A perceptual principle stating that even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains consistent.
monocular depth cues
Aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye
binocular disparity
The difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth.
change blindness
A phenomenon that occurs when people fail to detect changes to the visual details of a scene.
inattentional blindness
A failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention.
apparent motion
The perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing in rapid succession in different locations.
pitch
How high or low a sound is.
loudness
A sound’s intensity.
timbre
A listener’s experience of sound quality or resonance.
cochlea
A fluid-filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction.
basilar membrane
A structure in the inner ear that undulates when vibrations from the ossicles reach the cochlear fluid.
hair cells
Specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane.
area A1
A portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex.
place code
The mechanism by which the cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane
temporal code
The mechanism by which the cochlea registers low frequencies via the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve.
haptic perception
The active exploration of the environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands.
referred pain
Feeling of pain when sensory information from internal and external areas converges on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord.
gate-control theory
A theory of pain perception based on the idea that signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can be stopped, or gated, by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions.
vestibular system
The three fluid-filled semicircular canals and adjacent organs located next to the cochlea in each inner ear.
olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs)
Receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell.
olfactory bulb
A brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobes.
pheromones
Biochemical odorants emitted by other members of its species that can affect an animal’s behavior or physiology.
taste buds
The organ of taste transduction.
