Vocab - Sensation & Perception Flashcards
Sensation
Describes the process through which we detect physical energy from the environment and code that energy as neural signals
Sensory system
The part of the nervous system responsible for processing information
Perception
Describes the way a person selects, organizes, and interprets sensory information
Pheromones
Chemical substance released by an animal to trigger behavioral responses in other members of that species
Gate-control theory
States that a “Neurological gate” in the spinal cord controls the transmission of pain messages to the brain
Endorphin
Is a morphine like chemical that inhibits pain signals and is released by the medial forebrain bundle
Inattentional blindness
Describes the failure to perceive a given stimulus
Change blindness
Describes the failure to detect drastic auditory changes
Cocktail party
Is a phenomenon in which selective attention allows a person to concentrate on one voice and ignore many others
Pop-out stimulus
A stimulus that is important or interesting to a person
Multitasking
The act of juggling independent sensory
Illusory conjunction
Mistakenly combining features of two different stimuli
Synesthesia
A condition in which signals from the sensory organs are processed in the wrong cortical areas of the brain ‘imagine being able to actually taste a rainbow’
Top-down processing
Refers to our use of beliefs, experiences, expectations, and other concepts to share our view of the world
Unconscious inference
A phenomenon in which a person visual system use sensory information to draw conclusions about what he or she sees
