Unit 4 - Sensation and Perception Flashcards
Sensation
The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Perception
The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Bottom-up Processing
Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.
Top-down Processing
Information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
Selective Attention
The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
Inattentional Blindness
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Change Blindness
Failing to notice changes in the environment.
Psychophysics
The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.
Absolute Threshold
The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.
Signal Detection Theory
A 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 alertness.
Subliminal
Below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
Priming
The activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.
Difference Threshold
The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference.
Weber’s law
The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion/percentage (rather than a constant amount.)
Sensory adaption
Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
