Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
59 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
Sensation |
simple stimulation of a sense organ |
|
perception |
the organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation |
|
transduction |
when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into encoded neural signals sent to the central nervous system |
|
Psychophysics |
methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer's sensitivity to that stimulus |
|
Absolute Threshold |
the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus in 50% of the trials |
|
just noticeable difference |
minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected |
|
Weber's Law |
the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity |
|
Signal Detection |
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 decision criterion |
|
Sensory Adaptation |
sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions |
|
Visual Acuity |
the ability to see fine detail |
|
cornea |
light first passes through this and bends to send it to the pupil |
|
pupil |
a hole in the colored part of the eye |
|
iris |
controls the amount of light that can enter the eye |
|
retina |
a light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball |
|
accomodation |
the process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina |
|
Cones |
detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail (photoreceptor cell in the retina) |
|
Rods |
become active under low light conditions for night vision (photoreceptor cell in the retina) |
|
Fovea |
an area of the retina where vision is the clearest and there are no rods at all |
|
Blind Spot |
a location in the visual field that produces no sensation on the retina |
|
color-opponent system |
pairs of visual neurons work in opposition |
|
visual form agnosia |
the inability to recognize objects by sight |
|
Binding Problem |
how features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features |
|
Illusory Conjuntion |
a perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined |
|
Feature-integration Theory |
focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus, such as the color, shape, size, and location of letters, but is required to bind those individual features together |
|
Perceptual Constancy |
even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains consistent |
|
Simplicity |
visual system selects the simplest or most likely interpretation of something (Gestalt psychology) |
|
Closure |
filling in missing elements of a visual scene |
|
Continuity |
edges or contours that have the same orientation (good continuation) |
|
Similarity |
regions that are similar in color, lightness, shape, or texture are perceived as belonging to the same object |
|
Proximity |
clumping objects together |
|
Common Fate |
elements of a visual image that move together are perceived as parts of a single moving object |
|
Template |
a mental representation that can be directly compared to a viewed shape in the retinal image |
|
Monocular depth cues |
aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye |
|
Linear Perspective |
parallel lines seem to converge as they recede into the distance |
|
Texture Gradient |
view a uniformly patterned surface |
|
Interposition |
occurs when one object partly blocks another |
|
Relative Height in the image |
depends on field position |
|
Binocular Disparity |
the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides info about depth |
|
Apparent Motion |
perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing in rapid succession in different locations (flashing light vegas sign) |
|
Change Blindness |
when people fail to detect changes to the visual details of a scene
|
|
Inattentional Blindness |
a failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention |
|
Pitch |
how high or low a sound is (changes in the physical frequency of a sound wave) |
|
Loudness |
a sound's intensity (amplitude) |
|
Timbre |
a listener's experience of sound quality or resonance (differences in the complexity of sound waves) |
|
Cochlea |
a fluid-filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction |
|
basilar membrane |
a structure in the inner ear that undulates when vibrations from the ossicles reach the cochlear fluid |
|
Hair Cells |
specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane |
|
area A1 |
a portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex |
|
Place code |
different frequencies stimulate neural signals at specific places along the basilar membrane |
|
temporal code |
registers relatively low frequencies via the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve |
|
Haptic Perception |
the active exploration of the environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands |
|
Referred Pain |
sensory info from internal and external converges on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord |
|
Gate-control theory of pain |
signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can be stopped or gated, by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions |
|
Vestibular System |
the three fluid-filled semicircular canals and adjacent organs located next to the cochlea in each inner ear (maintains balance) |
|
Olfactory receptor neurons |
receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell |
|
Olfactory Bulb |
a brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobe |
|
Pheromones |
biochemical odorants emitted by other members of its species that can affect the animal's behavior or physiology |
|
taste buds |
(within papillae) the organ of taste transduction |
|
Five different tastes |
salt, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami |