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170 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Threadlike structures made of DNA molecules that contain the genes.
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Chromosomes
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A complex molecule containing the genetic information that makes up the chromosomes.
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DNA
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The biochemical units of heredity that make up chromosomes; a segment of DNA capable of synthesizing a protein.
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Gene
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The complex instructions for making an organism, consisting of all the genetic material in its chromosomes.
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Genome
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The principle that, among the range of inherited trait variations, those that lead to increased reproduction and survivial will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations.
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Natural Selection
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A random error in gene replication that leads to a change in the sequence of nucleotides; the source of all genetic diversity.
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Mutation
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The study of the evolution of behavior and the mind, using principles of natural selection.
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Evolutionary Psychology
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In psychology, the characteristics, whether biological or socially influenced, by which people define male and female.
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Gender
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The study of the relative power and limits of genetic and environmental influences on behavior.
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Behavior Genetics
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Every nongenetic influence, from prenatal nutrition to the people and things around us.
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Environment
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Twins who develop from a single fertilized egg that splits in two, creating two genetically identical organisms.
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Identical Twins
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Twins who develop from separate eggs. They are genetically no closer than brothers or sisters, but they share a fetal environment.
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Fraternal Twins
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A person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity.
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Temperament
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The proportion of variation amoing individuals that we can attribute to genes.
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Heritability
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The dependence of the effect of one factor on another factor.
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Interaction
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The subfield of biology that studies the molecular structure and function of genes.
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Molecular Genetics
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The enduring behaviors, ideas, attitudes, and traditions shared by a large group of people and transmitted from one generation to the next.
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Culture
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An understood rule for accepted and expected behavior. Prescribed proper behavior.
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Norm
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The buffer zone we like to maintain around our bodies.
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Personal Space
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Self-replicating ideas, fashions, and innovations passed from person to person.
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Memes
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The sex chromosome found in both men and women.
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X Chromosome
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The sex choromosome found only in males.
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Y Chromosome
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The sex choromosome found only in males.
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Testosterone
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A set of expectations about a social position, defining how those in the positon ought to behave.
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Role
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A set of expected behaviors for males and for females.
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Gender Role
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One's sense of being male or female.
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Gender Identity
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The acquisition of a traditional masculine or feminine role.
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Gender Typing
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The theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded or punished.
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Social Learning Theory
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The theory that children learn from their cultures a concept of what it means to be male and female and that they adjust their behaviors accordingly.
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Gender Schema Theory
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A branch of psychology that studies physical, cognitive, and social change throughout the life span
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Developmental Psychology
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The fertilized egg; it enters a two week period of rapid cell division develops into an embryo.
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Zygote
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The developing human organism from two weeks after fertilization through the second month.
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Embryo
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The developing human organism from nine weeks after conception to birth.
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Fetus
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Agents, such as chemicals and viruses, that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm.
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Teratogens
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Physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, symptoms include noticeable facial misproportions.
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Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
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Decreasing responsivness with repeated stimulation. As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a visual stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner.
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Habituation
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A baby's tendency, when touched on the cheek, to open the mouth and search for the nipple.
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Rooting Reflex
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Biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, realtively uninfluenced by experience.
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Maturation
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A concept or framework that organizes and interprets information.
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Schema
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Interpreting one's new experience in terms of one's existing schemas.
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Assiimilation
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Adapting one's current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information.
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Accomodation
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All the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing remembering, and communicating.
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Cognition
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In Plaget's theory, the stage from birth to about two years, during which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activites.
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Sensorimotor Stage
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The awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived.
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Object Permanence
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In Plaget's theory, the stage, from about to to six or seven years, during which a child learns to use language but does not comprehend the mental operations of concrete logic.
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Preoperational Stage
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The principle that properties such as mass, volume, and number remain the same despite changes in the forms of objects.
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Conservation
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In Piaget' s theory, the inability of the preoperational child to take another's point of view.
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Egocentrism
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People's ideas about their own and others' mental states, about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts and the behaviors these might predict.
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Theory of Mind
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A disorder that appears in childhood and is marked by deficient communication, social interaction, and understanding of others' states of mind.
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Autism
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In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development during which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events.
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Concrete Operational Stage
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In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development during which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts.
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Formal Operational Stage
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The fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about eight months of age.
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Stranger Anxiety
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An emotional tie with another person; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to the caregiver and showing distress on separation.
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Attachment
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An optimal period shortly after birth when an organism's exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces proper development.
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Critical Period
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The proces by which certain animals form attachments during a critical period early in life.
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Imprinting
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A sense that the world is a predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers.
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Basic Trust
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A sense of one's identity and personal worth.
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Self-Concept
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The transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending form puberty to independence.
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Adolescence
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The period of sexual maturation, during which a person becomes capable of reproducing.
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Puberty
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The body structures that directly make sexual reproduction possible.
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Primary Sex Characteristics
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Nonreproductive sexual characteristics.
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Secondary Sex Characteristics
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The first menstrual period.
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Menarche
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Before the age of nine, children obey to avoid punishment or to gain concrete rewards.
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Preconventional Morality
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By early adolescence morality evolves to care for others and upholds laws and social rules simply because they are laws and rules. Being able to take others' perspectives, adolescents may approve of actions that will gain social approval or that will help maintain social order.
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Conventional Morality
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Affirms people's agreed upon rights or follows what one personally perceives as basic ethical principles.
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Postconventional Morality
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One's sense of self, the idea that the adolescent's task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles.
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Identity
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The ability to form close, loving, relationships, a primary development task in late adolescence and early adulthood.
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Intimacy
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The time of natural cessation of menstruation, also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines.
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Menopause
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A progressive and irreversible brain disorder characterized by gradual deterioration of memory, reasoning, language, and finally, physical functioning.
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Alzheimer's Disease
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A study in which people of different ages are compared with one another.
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Cross Sectional Studies
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Research in which the same people are studied and retested over a long period.
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Longitudinal Study
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One’s accumulated knowledge and verbal skills, tends to increase with age.
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Crystallized Intelligence
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One’s ability to reason speedily and abstractly, tends to decrease during late adulthood.
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Fluid Intelligence
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Culturally preferred timing of social events.
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Social Clock
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The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from out environment.
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Sensation
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The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.
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Perception
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Analysis that begins with the sense receptors and works up the brain’s integration of sensory information.
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Bottom-Up Processing
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Information processing guided by higher level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
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Top-Down Processing
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Study of relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli such as their intensity and out psychological experience of them.
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Psychophysics
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The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus fifty percent of the time.
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Absolute Threshold
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Theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends of a person’s experience, expectations, motivation, and level of fatigue.
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Single Detection Theory
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Below one’s absolute threshold for conscious awareness.
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Subliminal
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The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection fifty percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference.
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Difference Threshold
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The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage.
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Weber’s Law
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Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
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Sensory Adaptation
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Conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies into neural impulses.
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Transduction
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Distance from the peak of on light or sound wave to the peak of the next.
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Wavelength
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Dimension of color determined by wavelength of light.
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Hue
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Light enters through here, which protects the eye and bends light to provide focus.
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Cornea
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Amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, the wave’s amplitude.
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Intensity
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Adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters.
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Pupil
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Ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion or the eye around the pupil, controls size of opening.
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Iris
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Transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus image on retina.
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Lens
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Process by which the eyes lens changes shape to focus near or far objects in the retina.
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Accommodation
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Light sensitive inner structure of the eye, containing receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin processing visual information.
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Retina
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Sharpness of vision.
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Acuity
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Condition in which nearby objects are seen more clearly than distant objects because the objects focus in front of retina.
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Nearsightedness
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Condition in which objects that are close are blurry because the image is focused behind the retina.
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Farsightedness
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Retinal receptors that detect black, white, and grey. Necessary for peripheral and twilight vision when cones don’t respond.
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Rods
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Receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in the daylight or well-lit conditions.
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Cones
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Point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a blind spot because there are no receptor cells there.
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Blind Spot
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The central focal point in the retina around which the eye’s cones cluster.
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Fovea
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Nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.
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Feature Detectors
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Processing of several aspects of a problem simultaneously. The brain’s natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision. Contrasts with a step by step process of solving.
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Parallel Processing
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Theory that retina contains three different color receptors: red, green, and blue. When stimulated in combination, can produce any color.
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Young Helmholtz Trichromatic (Three Color) Theory
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Theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision. Some cells are inhibited by red and some are stimulated by green. Others are vice versa.
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Opponent Process Theory
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Perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color even if changing illumination alters the wavelength reflected by the object.
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Color Constancy
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The sense of hearing.
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Audition
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Number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time.
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Frequency
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A tone’s highness or lowness depends of frequency.
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Pitch
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The chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones (hammer, anvil , and stirrup) that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea’s oval window.
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Middle Ear
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Innermost part of the ear, containing cochlea semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.
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Inner Ear
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A coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sounds waves trigger nerve impulses.
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Cochlea
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Theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated.
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Place Theory
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Theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch.
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Frequency Theory
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Hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea.
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Conduction Hearing Loss
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Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves, also nerve deafness.
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Senorineural Hearing Loss
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Theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological 'gate' that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The 'gate' is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.
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Gate-Control Theory
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The principle that one sense may influence another.
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Sensory Interaction
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The two parts of the brain that interact with smell.
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Amydgala, Hippocampus
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What are the four types of touch?
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Pressure, cold, heat, and pain
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Focusing conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.
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Selective Attention
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The tendency for vision to dominate other senses.
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Visual Capture
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An organized whole. Emphasizes our tendency to integrate pieces of meaningful information into a whole.
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Gestalt
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Organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings.
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Figure-Ground
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Minimum difference for a person to distinguish two stimuli.
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Just Noticable Difference. L - 8%, S - .3%, W - 2%.
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Taste receptor that senses how hot something is.
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Fungiform Papillae
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What are supertasters, tasters, and nontasters?
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Supertasters - More fungiform papillaes, taste more hot/spicy, feel more pain. Tasters - Middle. Nontasters - Low-end.
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Perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.
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Grouping
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We group nearby figures together.
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Proximity
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Figures similar to each other are grouped together.
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Similarity
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Perceive smooth continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones.
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Continuity
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When uniform and linked, we perceive areas as a single unit.
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Connectedness
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We fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object.
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Closure
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Ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional, allows us to judge distance.
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Depth Perception
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A laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals
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Visual Cliff
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Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend of the use of two eyes
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Binocular Cues
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Distance cues, such as linear perspective and overlap, available to either eye alone.
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Monocular Cues
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A binocular cue for perceiving depth: By comparing images from the two eyeballs, the brain computes distance, the greater the disparity (difference) between the two objects, the closer the object.
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Retinal Disparity
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Binocular cue for perceiving depth. The extent to which eyes converge inward when looking at an object.
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Convergence
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Illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in succession.
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Phi Phenomenon
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Perceiving objects as unchanging, even as illumination and retinal images change.
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Perceptual Constancy
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The brain will interpret slightly varying images as continuous movement.
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Stroboscopic Movement
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We perceive an object to be the same lightness even though illumination varies.
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Lightness Constancy
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In vision, the ability to adjust and artificially displaced or inverted visual field.
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Perceptual Adaptation
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Mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.
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Perceptual Set
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Explores how people and machines interact and how machines and physical environments can be adapted to human behaviors.
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Human Factor Psychology
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Controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.
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Extrasensory Perception
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Study of paranormal phenomena.
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Parapsychology
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Our awareness of ourselves and our environment.
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Consciousness
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Periodic physiological fluctuations.
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Biological Rhythms
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The biological clock; regular body rhythms that occur on a twenty four hour cycle.
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Circadian Rhythm
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A reoccurring sleep stage during which vivid dreams commonly occur.
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REM
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Relatively slow brain waves of a relaxed, awake state
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Alpha Waves
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Periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness.
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Sleep
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False sensory experiences.
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Hallucinations
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Large, slow brain waves associated with deep sleep.
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Delta Waves
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Reoccurring problems in falling or staying asleep.
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Insomnia
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A sleep disorder characterized by uncontrollable sleep attacks.
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Narcolepsy
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Sleep disorder characterized by temporary cessations of breathing during sleep and consequent momentary awakenings.
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Sleep Apnea
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Sleep disorder characterized by a high arousal and an appearance of being terrified, unlike nightmares, night terrors occur during stage 4, within 2 or 3 hours of falling asleep and are seldom remembered
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Sleep Terrors
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A sequence of images, emotions, and thoughts passing through a sleeping person’s mind.
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Dreams
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The remembered story line of a dream
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Manifest Content
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The underlying meaning of a dream
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Latent Content
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Tendency for REM sleep to increase following REM sleep deprivation.
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REM Rebound
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A social interaction in which one person suggests to another person that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur.
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Hynosis
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Supposed inability to recall what one experienced during hypnosis; induced by hypnotist’s suggestion.
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Posthypnotic Amnesia
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A suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized, used by some clinicians to help control undesired symptoms and behaviors.
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Posthypnotic Suggestion
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A split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others.
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Dissociation
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A hypnotized subject’s awareness of experiences, such as pain, that go unreported during hypnosis.
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Hidden Observer
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