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 sends information to the brain

Front 2

Perception

Back 2

the brain's interpretation of the raw sensory inputs

Front 3

Naive realism

Back 3

the world isn't precisely how we see it

Front 4

Transduction

Back 4

the process by which the nervous system converts an external energy or a substance into excitation or inhibition

Front 5

Sense receptor

Back 5

a specialized cell that transduces a specific stimulus

Front 6

Psychophysics

Back 6

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

Front 7

Absolute threshold

Back 7

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

Front 8

Just Noticable Difference (JND)

Back 8

the smallest change in the intensity of the stimulus we can detect

Front 9

Sensory adaptation

Back 9

your sense organs stop responding to info. reduced response

Front 10

Phosphenes

Back 10

vivid sensations of light caused by pressure on our eye receptor cells

Front 11

Doctrine of specific nerve energy

Back 11

all senses project to the brain

Front 12

Cross-modal processing

Back 12

the mixing of senses across the brain

Front 13

Synesthesia

Back 13

specific cross-modal sensations that some people experience

Front 14

Parallel processing

Back 14

attending to or processing info from multiple sources simultaneously

Front 15

Bottom-Up

Back 15

create a whole stimulus from its parts. driven by sensory info

Front 16

Top-Down

Back 16

create stimulus based on belief or expectation. driven by preconceptions and perceptual sets

Front 17

Subliminal perception

Back 17

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

Front 18

Subliminal persuasion

Back 18

subthreshold influences our life decisions

Front 19

Illusory placebo effect

Back 19

subjects didn't improve, but they thought they had

Front 20

Perceptual sets

Back 20

the relation between a stimulus and its context

Front 21

Perceptual constancy

Back 21

the process by which we perceive stimuli consistently across varied conditions

Front 22

Size constancy

Back 22

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

Front 23

Color constancy

Back 23

our ability to perceive color consistently across different levels of illumination

Front 24

Selective attention

Back 24

select one channel and turn the rest off

Front 25

Filter theory of attention

Back 25

pay attention to important stimuli and ignore others

Front 26

Dichotic listening

Back 26

hears two different messages for each ear

Front 27

Cocktail Party effect

Back 27

our ability to pick out an important message in a conversation that doesn't involve us

Front 28

Binding problem

Back 28

brain takes multiple pieces of information and combines them to represent something concrete

Front 29

Brightness

Back 29

the intensity of the reflected light that reaches our eyes

Front 30

Hue

Back 30

color of light

Front 31

Additive color mixing

Back 31

mixing yellow, blue, red to produce a white light

Front 32

Subtractive color mixing

Back 32

Mixing yellow, cyan, and magenta to produce a dark color

Front 33

Melanin

Back 33

brown

Front 34

Lipochrome

Back 34

yellow-brown

Front 35

Pupillary reflex

Back 35

to decrease the amount of light in the eyes

Front 36

Cornea

Back 36

curved, transparent layer covering the iris and pupil

Front 37

Lens

Back 37

completely transparent. bends light

Front 38

Accommodation

Back 38

thens change shape to focus light on the back of the eyes

Front 39

Myopia

Back 39

nearsightedness

Front 40

Hyperopia

Back 40

Farsightedness

Front 41

Retina

Back 41

thin membrane in the back of the eye

Front 42

Fovea

Back 42

central portion of the retina

Front 43

Acuity

Back 43

sharpness of vision

Front 44

Rods

Back 44

receptor cells in the retina allowing us to see in low levels of light

Front 45

Dark adaptation

Back 45

takes 30 minutes to have rods regain their maximum sensitivity to light

Front 46

Cones

Back 46

gives us color vision

Front 47

Photopigments

Back 47

chemicals that change following exposure to light

Front 48

Rhodopsin

Back 48

photopigments in rods

Front 49

Negative afterimage

Back 49

when rods fatigue when photopigments are depleted

Front 50

Ganglion cells

Back 50

bundle axons together and depart the eye to reach the brain

Front 51

Blind spot

Back 51

the part of the visual field we can't see

Front 52

Optic nerve

Back 52

travels from retina to rest of the brain

Front 53

Optic chiasm

Back 53

fork in the road to the brain along the optic nerves

Front 54

Complex cells

Back 54

orientation specific, restricted to one location

Front 55

Feature detection

Back 55

the ability to use certain minimal patterns to identify objects

Front 56

Subjective contours

Back 56

provide missing information about outlines

Front 57

Gesalt principles

Back 57

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

Front 58

Proximity

Back 58

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

Front 59

Similarity

Back 59

all things being equal, we see similar objects as a comprising a whole, more so than dissimilar objects

Front 60

Good continuation

Back 60

perceive objects as wholes, even when other objects block part of them

Front 61

Closure

Back 61

partial visual information is present, and the mind fills in what's missing

Front 62

Symmetry

Back 62

We perceive objects that are symmetrically arranged as wholes more often than those that aren't

Front 63

Figure-ground

Back 63

we make instant decision on what is to be the central figure and ignore the background

Front 64

Bistable

Back 64

an image we can perceive in one of 2 ways

Front 65

Emergence

Back 65

a perceptual gesalt that almost jumps out of the page and hits us all at once

Front 66

phi phenomenon

Back 66

the illusory perception of movement produced by successive flashing of images

Front 67

Color blindness

Back 67

can't see in color

Front 68

Trichromats

Back 68

we and our close biological relatives possess three kinds of cones

Front 69

Opponent process theory

Back 69

we perceive color as one of the complementary color pairs

Front 70

Monocular depth cues

Back 70

require one eye

Front 71

Binocular depth cues

Back 71

requires both eyes

Front 72

Relative size

Back 72

more distant objects look smaller than closer objects

Front 73

Texture gradient

Back 73

the texture of objects become less apparent as objects move farther away

Front 74

Interposition

Back 74

one object that's closer blocks our view of the object behind it

Front 75

Linear perspective

Back 75

outlines of rooms or buildings converge as distance increases

Front 76

Impossible figures

Back 76

figures that break the law of physics

Front 77

Height in plane

Back 77

distant objects seem higher and nearer objects seem lower

Front 78

Light and shadow

Back 78

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

Front 79

Motion parallax

Back 79

the ability to judge the distance of moving objects from their speed

Front 80

Binocular disparity

Back 80

the left and right eyes transmit different information for near objects but see distant objects similarly

Front 81

Binocular convergence

Back 81

looking at nearby objects, we reflectively focus on them by using our eye muscles to turn our eyes inward

Front 82

Visual cliff

Back 82

classic visual experiment

Front 83

Moon illusion

Back 83

the moon appears larger when its near the horizon than high in the sky

Front 84

Muller-Lyer illusion

Back 84

a line of identical length with arrows <---> = >---<

Front 85

Ponzo illusion

Back 85

railroad tracks illusion

Front 86

Horizontal-vertical illusion

Back 86

the vertical part of an upside down "T" is longer than the horizontal

Front 87

Ebbinghaus-Titchener illusion

Back 87

circle when surrounded by larger circles is smaller than a circle surrounded by smaller circles

Front 88

Change blindness

Back 88

poor at detecting obvious changes in complex scenes if those changes occur during eye movements

Front 89

Synethesia

Back 89

a condition in which people experience cross modal sensations

Front 90

Grapheme-color

Back 90

numbers are colors

Front 91

Music color

Back 91

musical notes are colors

Front 92

Lexical-taste

Back 92

words have tastes, letters take on "personality traits"

Front 93

Monochromats

Back 93

who have only one type of cone and thereby lose all color vision

Front 94

Dichromats

Back 94

have two cones and only missing one

Front 95

Visual agnosia

Back 95

a deficit of perceiving objects

Front 96

Blindsight

Back 96

the phenomenon in which people with blindness can make correct guesses about things in their environment

Front 97

Audition

Back 97

sense of hearing

Front 98

Pitch

Back 98

frequency of a wave

Front 99

Loudness

Back 99

amplitude and measured in decibels

Front 100

Timbre

Back 100

quality or complexity of sound

Front 101

Pinna

Back 101

cartilage flap

Front 102

Tympanic membrane

Back 102

eardrum

Front 103

Cochlea

Back 103

converts vibration into neural activity

Front 104

Place theory

Back 104

pitch perception

Front 105

Frequency theory

Back 105

the rate at which neurons fire action potentials faithfully reproduces the pitch

Front 106

Binaural cues

Back 106

the presentation of dissimilar sounds

Front 107

Sound shadow

Back 107

head blocks the sound from the ear farthest away from the sound

Front 108

Echolocation

Back 108

emitting sound and listening to the echoes to determine their distance from objects

Front 109

Conductive deafness

Back 109

malfunctioning of the ear, especially with the eardrum or ossicles