Module 12 Flashcards
The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Perception
The process by which are sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Sensation
Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.
Bottom-up processing
Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Top-down processing
The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.
Psychophysics
The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.
Absolute threshold
The theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (“signal”) amid background stimulation (“noise”). Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person’s experience, expectations, motivation, and level of fatigue.
Signal detection theory
Below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
Subliminal
The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.
Priming
The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference. (also called just noticeable difference or JND.)
Difference threshold
The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount.)
Weber’s law
Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
Sensory adaptation
The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus, as in the cocktail party effect.
Selective attention
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Inattentional blindness
