Unit 4: Sensation and Perception Flashcards
The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
Sensation
The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
Perception
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 focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
Selective Attention
Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.
Inattentional Blindness
Failing to notice changes in the environment.
Change Blindness
Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of litmus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret.
Transduction
The study of relationship 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 percent of the time.
Absolute Threshold
A theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise).
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 percent of the time.
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
A mental predispostion to perceive one thing and not another.
Perceptual Set
The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
Extrasensory Perception (ESP)
The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.
Parapsychology
The dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth.
Hue
The amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, as determined by the wave’s amplitude.
Intensity
The adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters.
Pupil
A ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening.
Iris
The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina.
Lens
The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information.
Retina