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43 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Plato
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Compares our ordinary sense of reality to prisoners in a cave; paints this imaginary picture to emphasize how critically our conception of reality depends on what we can learn about the world through our senses.
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Heraclitus
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"You can never step into the same river twice."; used this metaphor to stress his view that everything is always changing.
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adaptation
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A reduction in response caused by prior or continuing stimulation.
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Democritus
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had almost complete trust in the senses; this trust arose from his radical idea that the world is made up of atoms that collide with one another.; believed that sensations are caused by atoms leaving objects and making contact with our sense organs; this meant that our senses should be trusted because perception is the result of the physical interaction between the world and our bodies; most reliable senses were those that detect the weight and texture of objects
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Sensory transducer
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A receptor that converts physical energy from the environment into neural activity
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Nativism
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The idea that the mind produces ideas that are not derived from external sources, and that we have abilities that are innate and not learned.
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Dualism
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The idea that both mind and body exist.
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Monism
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The idea that mind and matter are formed from, or reducible to, a single ultimate substance or principle of being.
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Materialism
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The idea that physical matter is the only reality, and everything including the mind can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Materialism is a type of monism.
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Mentalism
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The idea that the mind is the true reality, and objects exist only as aspects of the mind's awareness. Mentalism is a type of monism.
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Mind-body dualism
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Originated by Rene Descartes, the idea positing the existence of two distinct principles of being in the universe; spirit/soul and matter/body.
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Empiricism
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The idea that experience from the senses is the only source of knowledge.
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John Locke
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sought to explain how all thoughts, even complex ones, could be constructed from experience with a collection of sensations;provides us with empiricism's most vivid image: that of the newborn mind as a tabula rasa, or "blank slate" on which experience writes;
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George Berkeley
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studied ways in which perception, such as perception of distance, is limited by the information available to us through our eyes. Nevertheless, he was convinced that everything we know must come from our sensory experience, no matter how limited it may be.
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Gustav Fechner
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invented psychophysics and is thought by some to be the true founder of experimental psychology. is best known for his pioneering work relating changes in the physical world to changes in our psychological experiences.
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Ernst Weber
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discovered that the smallest change in a stimulus, such as the weight of an object, that can be detected is a constant proportion of the stimulus level. This relationship became known as "Weber's Law"
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Panpsychism
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The idea that all matter has consciousness.
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Psychophysics
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The science of defining quantitative relationships between physical and psychological (subjective) events.
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Two-point threshold
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The minimum distance at which two stimuli (e.g. two simultaneous touches) are just perceptible as separate.
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Just noticeable difference (JND)
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The smallest detectable difference between two stimuli, or the minimum change in a stimulus that can be correctly judged as different from a reference stimulus. Also called difference threshold.
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Weber fraction
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The constant of proportionality in Weber's law.
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Weber's law
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The principle that the just noticeable difference (JND) is a constant fraction of the comparison stimulus.
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Fechner's law
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A principle describing the relationship between stimulus magnitude and resulting sensation magnitude such that the magnitude of subjective sensation increases proportionally to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity.
S= k log R |
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Absolute threshold
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Minimum amount of stimulation necessary for a person to detect a stimulus 50% of the time.
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Method of constant stimuli
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A psychophysical method in which many stimuli, ranging from rarely to almost always perceivable (or rarely to almost always perceivably different from a reference stimulus), are presented one at a time. Participants respond to each presentation: "yes/no," "same/different," and so on.
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Method of limits
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A psychophysical method in which the particular dimension of a stimulus, or the difference between two stimuli, is varied incrementally until the participant responds differently.
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Method of adjustment
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The method of limits for which the subject controls the change in the stimulus.
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Receiver operating characteristics (ROC) curve
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The graphical plot of the hit rate as a function of the false alarm rate. If these are the same, points fall on the diagonal, indicating that the observer cannot tell the difference between the presence and absence of the signal. As the observer's sensitivity increases, the curve bows upward toward the upper left corner. That point represents a perfect ability to tell signal from noise (100% hits, 0% false alarms)
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Signal detection theory
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A psychophysical theory that quantifies the response of an observer to the presentation of a signal in the presence of noise. Measures attained from a series of presentations are sensitivity (d') and criterion of the observer.
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Magnitude estimation
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A psychophysical method in which the participant assigns values according to perceived magnitudes of the stimuli.
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Steven's power law
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A principle describing the relationship between stimulus magnitude and resulting sensation magnitude, such that the magnitude of subjective sensation is proportional to the stimulus magnitude raised to an experiment.
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Doctrine of specific nerve energies
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A doctrine formulated by Johannes Muller stating that the nature of a sensation depends on which sensory fibers are stimulated, not on how fibers are stimulated.
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Cranial nerves
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Twelve pairs of nerves (one for each side of the body) that originate in the brain stem and reach sense organs and muscles through openings in the skull.
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Olfactory (I) nerves
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The first pair of cranial nerves, which conduct impulses from the mucous membranes of the nose to the olfactory bulb.
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Optic (II) nerves
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The second pair of cranial nerves, which arise from the retina and carry visual information to the thalamus and other parts of the brain.
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Auditory (VIII) nerves
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The eight pair of cranial nerves, which connect the inner ear with the brain, transmitting impulses concerned with hearing and balance.The auditory nerve is composed of the cochlear nerve and the vestibular nerve and therefore is sometimes referred to as the "vestibulocochlear nerve."
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Oculomotor (III) nerves
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The third pair of cranial nerves, which innervate all the extrinsic muscles of the eye except the lateral rectus and the superior oblique muscles, and which innervate the elevator muscle of the upper eyelid, the ciliary muscle, and the sphincter muscle of the pupil.
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Trochlear (IV) nerves
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The fourth pair of cranial nerves, which innervate the superior or oblique muscles of the eyeballs.
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Abducens (VI) nerves
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The sixth pair of cranial nerves, which innervate the lateral rectus muscle of each eye.
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Polysensory
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A blending of multiple sensory systems.
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Vitalism
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Idea that "vital forces" are active within living organisms, and these forces cannot be explained by physical processes of matter more generally.
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Synapse
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The junction between neurons that permits information transfer.
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Neurotransmitter
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A chemical substance used in neuronal communication at synapses
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