Foundations Of Psychology - Perception Key Terms

Front 1

Sensation

Back 1

The simple awareness due to the stimulatuon of a sense organ.

Front 2

Perception

Back 2

The organization, identification and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation.

Front 3

Synaesthesia

Back 3

The experience (perceptual) of one sense that is envoked by another sense.

Front 4

Transduction

Back 4

This occurs when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals which are sent to the CNS.

Front 5

Operationalize

Back 5

The expressions or definitions of something in terms of the operations used to determine or prove it.

Front 6

Psychophysics

Back 6

The methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer's sensitivity to that stimuli.

Front 7

Absolute Threshold

Back 7

The minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus.

Front 8

Threshold

Back 8

The boundary which separates 2 or more sets of criteria.

Front 9

JND (Just noticeable difference)

Back 9

The minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected.

Front 10

Standard Stimulus

Back 10

The fixed intensity of a stimulus the participants are shown at the start of sensory studies.

Front 11

Weber's Law

Back 11

The JND of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity of the stimuli.

Front 12

SDT (Signal Detection Theory)

Back 12

The response to a stimulus depends on the person's sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person's reponse criterion.

Front 13

D' (D-Prime)

Back 13

A statistics that gives a relatively pure measure of the observer's sensitivity ot ability to detect signals.

Front 14

Perceptual Sensitivity

Back 14

How effective the perceptual systems represents sensory events.

Front 15

Sensory Adaptation

Back 15

The observation that sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an oranism adapts to current conditions.

Front 16

Monocular Depth Cues

Back 16

Aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye.

Front 17

Relative Size.

Back 17

The size of an object compared to another.

Front 18

Familiar Size.

Back 18

The brain is familiar with the range of sizes of the perceieved object. Thus it transposes the image and judges the distance by comparing the retinal size of the stimulus with the mental size representation of said stimulus.

Front 19

Linear Perspective.

Back 19

The phenomenon where parallel lines converge as they recede into the distance.

Front 20

Texture Gradient

Back 20

The detail in the texture of an object becomes less apparent the further the stimuli is.

Front 21

Interposition

Back 21

This is where distance is percieved on the basis of superpositioning of objects. Those which block other objects are percieved as closer (no clue on distance between the superpositioned stimuli).

Front 22

Relative Height in the Image

Back 22

The distance of an object depends on where the object is in the field of vision. Closer objects tend to fall in the lower plain of our vision field.

Front 23

Pictorial Depth Cues.

Back 23

Cues which are present even in 2D stimuli (ie paintings) where the depth is not existent.

Front 24

Binocular Depth Cues

Back 24

The diffrence in the retinal images of the 2 eyes provide information about depth.

Front 25

Stereoscopic Vision.

Back 25

The space between our eyes mean that each eye registers a slightly different view of stimuli.

Front 26

Binocular Disparity

Back 26

The difference in the image evoked in each eye is computated and analysed influencing the sense of depth.

Front 27

Motion Parallax

Back 27

Depth cue based on the movement of the head over time.

Front 28

Illusions (Perceptual)

Back 28

Errors of perception, memory or judgment in which subjective experience differ from objective reality.

Front 29

Apparent motion

Back 29

The perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing in a rapid succession in different locations.