Introducing Psychology, Chapter 4

Front 1

sensation

Back 1

simple awareness due to the stimulation 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

transduction

Back 3

what takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals sent to the central nervous system

Front 4

psychophysics

Back 4

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

Front 5

absolute threshold

Back 5

the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus

Front 6

just noticeable difference (JND)

Back 6

the minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected

Front 7

Weber's law

Back 7

the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity

Front 8

signal detection theory

Back 8

an observation that the response to a stimulus depends both on a person's sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person's response criterion

Front 9

sensory adaptation

Back 9

sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions

Front 10

visual acuity

Back 10

the ability to see fine detail

Front 11

retina

Back 11

light sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball

Front 12

cones

Back 12

photoreceptors that detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail

Front 13

rods

Back 13

photoreceptors that become active only under low light conditions for night vision

Front 14

fovea

Back 14

an area of the retina where vision is the clearest and there are no rods at all

Front 15

blind spot

Back 15

an area of the retina that contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light

Front 16

receptive field

Back 16

the region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the firing rate of that nueron

Front 17

area V1

Back 17

the part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex

Front 18

perceptual constancy

Back 18

a perceptual principal stating that even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains consistent

Front 19

monocular depth cues

Back 19

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

Front 20

binocular disparity

Back 20

the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth

Front 21

apparent motion

Back 21

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

Front 22

pitch

Back 22

how high or low a sound is

Front 23

loudness

Back 23

a sound's intensity

Front 24

timbre

Back 24

a listener's experience of sound quality or resonance

Front 25

cochlea

Back 25

a fluid filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction

Front 26

basilar membrane

Back 26

a structure in the inner ear that undulates when vibrations from the ossicles reach the cochlear fluid

Front 27

hair cells

Back 27

specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane

Front 28

area A1

Back 28

a protion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex

Front 29

place code

Back 29

the cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane

Front 30

temporal code

Back 30

the cochlea registers low frequencies via the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve

Front 31

haptic perception

Back 31

the active exploration of environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands

Front 32

referral pain

Back 32

the feeling of pain when sensory information from internal and external areas converge on the same nerve cell in the spinal cord

Front 33

gate-control theory

Back 33

a theory of pain perception based on the idea that signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can be stopped, or gated, by the interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions

Front 34

vestibular system

Back 34

the three fluid filled semicircular canals and adjacent organs located next to the cochlea in each inner ear

Front 35

olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs)

Back 35

receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell

Front 36

olfactory bulb

Back 36

a brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobes

Front 37

pheromones

Back 37

biochemical odorants emitted by other members of their species that can affect an animal's behavior or physiology

Front 38

taste buds

Back 38

the organ of taste transduction