Psychology Chapter 5

Front 1

Sensation

Back 1

how sense organs respond to external stimuli and transmit the responses to the brain

Front 2

Perception

Back 2

the processing, organization, and interpretation of sensory signals that result in an internal representation of the stimulus

Front 3

Transduction

Back 3

a process by which sensory receptors produce neural impulses when they receive physical or chemical stimulation

Front 4

Absolute Threshold

Back 4

the minimum intensity of stimulation that must occur before one can experience a sensation

Front 5

Difference Threshold

Back 5

the minimum amount of change required in order to detect a difference b/w intensity of stimuli

Front 6

Sensory Adaptation

Back 6

when an observer’s sensitivity to stimuli decreases over time

Front 7

Taste Buds

Back 7

sensory receptors that transduce taste information

Front 8

Olfactory Bulb

Back 8

the brain center for smell, located below the frontal lobes

Front 9

Pheromones

Back 9

chemicals released by animals and humans that trigger physiological or behavioral reactions in other members of the same species

Front 10

Haptic Sense

Back 10

the sense of touch

Front 11

Sound Wave

Back 11

the pattern of the changes in air pressure through time that results in the percept of a sound

Front 12

Outer Ear

Back 12

the structure of the ear at which sound waves arrive

Front 13

Eardrum(tympanic membrane)

Back 13

a thin membrane, which sound waves vibrate, that marks the beginning of the middle ear

Front 14

Ossicles

Back 14

three tiny bones, the incus (hammer), malleus (anvil), and stapes (stirrup), in the middle ear that transfer the vibrations of the eardrum to the oval window

Front 15

Cochlea

Back 15

a fluid-filled tube that curls into a snail-like shape, contains the basilar membrane, which in turn contains auditory receptor cells called hair cells, which transduce the mechanical energy of the sound wave into neural impulses

Front 16

Temporal Coding

Back 16

a mechanism for encoding low-frequency auditory stimuli in which the frequency of the sound wave is encoded by the frequency of firing of the hair cells

Front 17

Place Coding

Back 17

a mechanism for encoding high-frequency auditory stimuli in which the frequency of the sound wave is encoded by the location of the hair cells along the basilar membrane

Front 18

Retina

Back 18

the thin inner surface of the back of the eyeball, contains the photoreceptors that transduce light into neural signals

Front 19

Accommodation

Back 19

a process by which muscles change the shape of the lens by flattening it to focus on distant objects or by thickening it to focus on closer objects

Front 20

Fovea

Back 20

the center of the retina where cones are densely packed

Front 21

Receptive Field

Back 21

the region of visual space to which neurons in the primary visual cortex are sensitive

Front 22

Lateral Inhibition

Back 22

a visual process in which adjacent photoreceptors tend to inhibit one another

Front 23

Subtractive Color Mixing

Back 23

a way to produce a given spectral pattern in which the mixture occurs within the stimulus itself and is actually a physical, not psychological, process

Front 24

Additive Color Mixing

Back 24

a way to produce a given spectral pattern in which different wavelengths of light are mixed, the percept is determined by the interaction of these wavelengths with receptors in the eye and is a psychological process

Front 25

Primary Visual Cortex (V1)

Back 25

the largest area in the occipital lobe, where the thalamus projects the image

Front 26

Retinotopic Organization

Back 26

the systematic ordering of the neuronal pathway from the retina to the occipital lobe; this organization preserves spatial relationships, so that adjacent areas of the retina correspond to adjacent areas in the primary visual cortex

Front 27

Visual Search Task

Back 27

an experiment used to study form perception, in which an observer tries to detect a target stimulus among an array of distracter stimuli

Front 28

Pop-out

Back 28

the phenomenon whereby, when simple stimuli are used, subjects take the same amount of time to find the target, whether there are a few or many distracters

Front 29

Bottom-up Processing

Back 29

a hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which data are relayed form one processing level to the next, always moving to a higher level of processing

Front 30

Top-down Processing

Back 30

a hierarchical model of pattern recognition in which information at higher levels of processing can also influence lower, “earlier” levels in the processing hierarchy

Front 31

Binocular Depth Cues

Back 31

cues of depth perception that arise from the fact that people have two eyes

Front 32

Monocular Depth Cues

Back 32

cues of depth perception that are available to each eye alone

Front 33

Binocular Disparity

Back 33

a cue of depth perception that is caused by the distance b/w a person’s eyes

Front 34

Perceptual Constancy

Back 34

people correctly perceive objects as constant in their shape, size, color, and lightness despite raw sensory data that could mislead perception

Front 35

Cocktail Party Phenomenom

Back 35

the ability to focus on a single conversation in the midst of a chaotic cocktail party or other similarly noisy situation

Front 36

Filter Theory

Back 36

a theory that people have a limited capacity for sensory information and thus screen incoming information, letting in only the most important

Front 37

Early Selection Theory

Back 37

a theory that we can choose the stimuli to which we will attend before we process their basic features

Front 38

Late Selection Theory

Back 38

a theory that people take in sensory information, process it, and then select which aspects of the stimuli should be attended after processing