Psychology Chapter 4

Front 1

synesthesia

Back 1

the perceptual experience of one sense that is evoked by another sense

Front 2

sensation

Back 2

simple stimulation of a sense organ

Front 3

perception

Back 3

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

Front 4

transduction

Back 4

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

Front 5

psychophysics

Back 5

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

Front 6

absolute threshold

Back 6

the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus

Front 7

just noticeable difference (JND)

Back 7

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

Front 8

Weber's law

Back 8

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

Front 9

signal detection theory

Back 9

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 10

sensory adaptation

Back 10

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

Front 11

visual acuity

Back 11

the ability to see fine detail

Front 12

retina

Back 12

light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball

Front 13

accommodation

Back 13

the process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina

Front 14

cones

Back 14

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

Front 15

rods

Back 15

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

Front 16

fovea

Back 16

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

Front 17

blind spot

Back 17

a location in the visual field that produces no sensation on the retina because the corresponding area of the retina contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light

Front 18

receptive field

Back 18

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

Front 19

trichromatic color representation

Back 19

the pattern of responding across the three types of cones that provides a unique code for each color

Front 20

color-opponent system

Back 20

pairs of visual neurons that work in opposition

Front 21

are V1

Back 21

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

Front 22

visual-form agnosia

Back 22

the inability to recognize objects by sight

Front 23

binding problem

Back 23

how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features

Front 24

illusory conjunction

Back 24

a perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined

Front 25

feature integration theory

Back 25

the idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus but is required to bind those individual features together

Front 26

perceptual constancy

Back 26

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

Front 27

template

Back 27

a mental representation that can be directly compared to a viewed shape in the retinal image

Front 28

monocular depth cues

Back 28

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

Front 29

binocular disparity

Back 29

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

Front 30

apparent motion

Back 30

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

Front 31

change blindness

Back 31

when people fail to detect changes to the visual details of a scene

Front 32

inattentional blindness

Back 32

a failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention

Front 33

pitch

Back 33

how high or low a sound is

Front 34

loudness

Back 34

a sounds intensity

Front 35

timbre

Back 35

a listener's experience of sound quality or resonance

Front 36

cochlea

Back 36

a fluid-filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction

Front 37

basilar membrane

Back 37

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

Front 38

hair cells

Back 38

specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane

Front 39

area A1

Back 39

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

Front 40

place code

Back 40

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

Front 41

temporal code

Back 41

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

Front 42

haptic perception

Back 42

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

Front 43

referred pain

Back 43

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

Front 44

gate-control theory

Back 44

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

Front 45

vestibular system

Back 45

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

Front 46

olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs)

Back 46

receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell

Front 47

olfactory bulb

Back 47

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

Front 48

pheromones

Back 48

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

Front 49

taste buds

Back 49

the organ of taste transduction