Sensation And Perception

Front 1

Sensation

Back 1

The detection of physical energy by sense organs in the eyes, ears, skin, nose, and tongue, which then send info to brain

Front 2

Perception

Back 2

the brain's interpretation of raw sensory inputs- giving meaning to sensations

Front 3

Transduction

Back 3

The process of converting an external energy or substance into neural activity

Front 4

Sense Receptor

Back 4

specialized cell responsible for converting external stimuli into neural activity (transduction) for a specific sensory system

Front 5

Sensory Adaption

Back 5

Activation of any sense is greatest when we first detect a stimuli; response declines in strength longer we are exposed to it (think entering a room w. weird smell- don't notice after awhile)

Front 6

Absolute Threshold

Back 6

lowest level of a stimulus needed for the nervous system to detect a change 50% of the time

Front 7

Psychophysics

Back 7

the study of how we perceive sensory stimuli based on their physical characteristics

Front 8

Weber's Law

Back 8

the stronger the stimulus to begin with, the bigger the change in stimulus intensity is needed for that change to be detected.

Front 9

Signal Detection Theory

Back 9

Theory that helps psychologists determine how we detect stimuli under uncertain conditions

Front 10

Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies

Back 10

Even though there are many distinct stimulus energies (light, sound, taste, touch, etc), the sensation we experience is determined by the nature of the sense receptor, not the stimulus.

Front 11

Response biases

Back 11

tendencies to make one type of guess over another when we’re in doubt

Front 12

Cross-modal Processing

Back 12

Mixing of senses across brain areas

Front 13

Bottom-up Processing

Back 13

Think from parts (bottom) to whole (top); detect basic features of something to recognize whole pattern

Front 14

Top-Down Processing

Back 14

Conceptually driven; go from whole to parts; draw on experience, beliefs, and expectations to arrive at meaning

Front 15

Subliminal Perception

Back 15

the processing of sensory information that occurs below the level of conscious awareness

Front 16

Subliminal Persuasion

Back 16

Subthreshold influences over our product choices, votes in elections, and life decisions

Front 17

Perceptual Constancy

Back 17

Process by which we perceive consistently across varied conditions

Front 18

Shape Constancy

Back 18

Our tendency to perceive objects as having a fixed shape despite changing retinal images

Front 19

Size Constancy

Back 19

our ability to perceive objects as the same size no matter how near or far away they are from us

Front 20

Color Constancy

Back 20

Our ability to perceive color consistently across different levels of illumination

Front 21

Selective Attention

Back 21

Process of selecting one sensory channel and ignoring or minimizing others

Front 22

Cocktail Party Effect

Back 22

Our ability to pick out an important message (like our name) in a conversation that doesn’t involve us

Front 23

The blinding problem

Back 23

How do our brains take multiple pieces of info. And combine them to represent something concrete?

Front 24

Brightness

Back 24

the intensity of the reflected light that reaches our eyes

Front 25

White objects

Back 25

Reflect all of the light and absorb none of it

Front 26

Black objects

Back 26

Absorb all of the light and reflect none of it

Front 27

Hue

Back 27

The color of light

Front 28

Additive color mixing

Back 28

Mixing varying amts of the 3 primary colors to produce any color

Front 29

Subtractive color mixing

Back 29

Mixing colored pigments in paint/ink

Front 30

Sclera

Back 30

White part of eye

Front 31

Iris

Back 31

colored part of eye; ring of muscles that control the dilation of the pupil (how much light enters)

Front 32

Pupil

Back 32

Controls the amt of light that enters the eye by dilating or contracting

Front 33

Cornea

Back 33

Curved, transparent layer covering iris and pupil; bends incoming light to focus it on retina

Front 34

Myopia (near-sightedness)

Back 34

an ability to see close objects well, but an inability to see far objects well

Front 35

Hyperopia (far-sightedness)

Back 35

ability to see far object well, but inability to see close objects well

Front 36

Accommodation

Back 36

changing the shape of the lens to focus on objects near or far

Front 37

Lens

Back 37

changes its curvature to keep images in focus

Front 38

Retina

Back 38

membrane at back of the eye responsible for converting light into neural activity

Front 39

Fovea

Back 39

central area of the retina

Front 40

Photoreceptors

Back 40

convert light energy into neural activity

Front 41

Photopigments

Back 41

chemicals that change following exposure to light

Front 42

Rods

Back 42

Rhodopsin (more sensitive to light > no color)

Front 43

Cones

Back 43

Iodopsin (color > not good in dim light)

Front 44

Ganglion cells

Back 44

Containn axons that bundle together to form the optic nerve, which leaves the eye and transfers to the brain

Front 45

Simple cells

Back 45

cells in primary visual cortex (VI) that display distinctive responses to lines of a specific orientation in a specific location

Front 46

Complex cells

Back 46

Cells that are also orientation-specific, but responses are less restricted to one location

Front 47

Feature Detection

Back 47

our ability to use certain minimal patterns to identify objects

Front 48

Subjective Contours

Back 48

our brains often provide missing info about outlines of objects

Front 49

Gestalt Psychologists

Back 49

Early researchers of how people perceive sights and sounds as organized wholes

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Gestalt Principles

Back 50

rules governing how we perceive objects as wholes within their overall context

Front 51

Proximity

Back 51

objects physically close to each other tend to be perceived as unified wholes

Front 52

Closure

Back 52

When partial visual info is present, mind fills in whats missing

Front 53

Similarity

Back 53

we see similar objects as comprising a whole, much more so than dissimilar objects

Front 54

Good continuation

Back 54

We still perceive objects as wholes, even if other objects block part of them

Front 55

Symmetry

Back 55

we perceive objects that are symmetrically arranged as wholes more often than those that aren’t

Front 56

Figure-ground

Back 56

perceptually, we make an instant decision to focus attn on what we believe is the central figure, largely ignoring what we believe is the background

Front 57

Bistable Images

Back 57

not technically a gestalt law

Front 58

Emergence

Back 58

Perceptual gestalt that almost jump out from the page and hits us all at once

Front 59

Phi phenomenon

Back 59

the illusory perception of movement produced by the successive flashing of images (bird in cage toy)

Front 60

Trichromatic Theory

Back 60

idea that color vision is based on our sensitivity to 3 different colors- blue, green, red

Front 61

Color Blindness

Back 61

Inability to see some or all colors

Front 62

Opponent Process Theory

Back 62

idea that we perceive color as either red or green, or as either blue or yellow

Front 63

Depth Perception

Back 63

ability to judge distance and 3D relations

Front 64

Relative Size

Back 64

2 objects assumed to be same size; more distant objects look smaller than closer objects

Front 65

Texture Gradient

Back 65

Texture of objects become less apparent as objects more farther away

Front 66

Interposition

Back 66

Closer objects block our view of objects farther away

Front 67

Linear Perspective

Back 67

The outlines of rooms/buildings converge as distance increases

Front 68

Height in plane

Back 68

in a scene, distant objects appear higher, & nearer objects lower

Front 69

Light and shadow

Back 69

objects cast shadows that give us a sense of their 3-D form

Front 70

Motion Parallax

Back 70

ability to judge distance of moving objects from their speed

Front 71

Binocular Disparity

Back 71

The more different the image is from each eye, the closer the object is perceived to be to us

Front 72

Binocular Convergence

Back 72

The more eyes converge (turn inwards or “cross”) the closer the object is to us

Front 73

Visual cliff experiment

Back 73

shows that infants between 6 & 14 mos. hesitate to crawl over the glass, even when their moms call them.

Front 74

Synesthesia

Back 74

A condition in which people experience cross-modal sensations

Front 75

Change Blindness

Back 75

We’re bad at noticing changes in complex scenes if those changes happen while our eyes are moving, lights are flickering, or during frame changes in a video (how movies work)

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Blindness

Back 76

The presence of vision less than/equal to 20/200 (where 20/20 is perfect).

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Monochromats

Back 77

have only 1 type of cone (are missing 2 out of the 3 types that most people have)

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Dichromats

Back 78

have only 2 types of cones (are missing 1 out of the 3 types)

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Red-green color blindness

Back 79

Most Common type, more common in men

Front 80

Motion Blindness

Back 80

disorder in which patients can’t seamlessly string still images processed by their brains into perception of ongoing motion.

Front 81

Visual Agnosia

Back 81

a deficit in perceiving objects

Front 82

Blindsight

Back 82

phenomenon in which people with cortical blindness (damage to V1) can make correct guesses about things in their environment, even though they can’t see them.