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
The process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina.
Accommodation
Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don’t respond.
Rods
Retinal receptors cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions.
Cones
The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.
Optic Nerve
The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a “blind” spot because no receptor cells are located there.
Blind Spot
The central focal point in the retina, around which the eye’s cones cluster.
Fovea
Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.
Feature Detectors
The processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision.
Parallel Processing
The theory that the retina contains three different color receptors - one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue - which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color.
Young-Helmholtz Trichromatic theory
The theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision.
Opponent-Process Theory
An organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
Gestalt
the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).
Figure-Ground
The perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
Grouping
The ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.
Depth Perception
A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.
Visual Cliff
Depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes.
Binocular Cues
A binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance - the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.
Retinal Disparity
Depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone.
Monocular Cues
An illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent light blink on and off in quick succession.
Phi Phenomenon
Perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, brightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.
Perceptual Constancy
Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.
Color Constancy
In vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.
Perceptual Adaptation
The sense or act of hearing
Audition
The number of complete wavelength that pass a point in a given time.
Frequency
A tone’s experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency.
Pitch
The chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea’s oval window.
Middle Ear
A coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses.
Cochlea
The innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.
Inner Ear
Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss
Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
Conduction Hearing Loss
A device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.
Cochlear Implant
In hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated.
Place Theory
In hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sens its pitch.
Frequency Theory
The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The “gate” is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming form the brain.
Gate-Control Theory
The system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.
Kinesthesia
The sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance.
Vestibular Sense
The principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste.
Sensory Interaction
In psychological science, the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments.
Embodied Cognition
