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AP Psychology-Ch 4

Chapter 4 Vocabulary

Question	Answer
Sensation	The process by which stimulation of a sensory receptor produces neural impulses that the brain interprets as a sound, a visual image ,an odor, a taste, a pain, or other sensory image.
Perception	A process that makes sensory patterns meaningful.
Transduction	Transformation of one form of energy into another-especially the transformation of stimulus information into nerve signals by the sense organs.
Sensory adaptation	Loss of responsiveness in receptor cells after stimulations has remained unchanged for a while, as when a swimmer becomes adapted to the temperature of the water.
Absolute threshold	The amount of stimulation necessary for a stimulus to be detected. In practice, this means that the presence or absence of a stimulus is detected correctly half the time over many trials.
Difference threshold	The smallest amount by which a stimulus can be changed and the difference can be detected half the time.
Just noticeable difference	(JND) Same as the difference threshold.
Weber’s law	The size of JND is proportional to the intensity of the stimulus; the JND is large when the stimulus intensity is high and is small when the stimulus intensity is low. (This concept has no connection with Ann Weber, one of your authors.)
Fechner’s law	The magnitude of a stimulus can be estimated by the formula S
Steven’s power law	A law of magnitude estimation that is more accurate than Fechner’s law and covers a wider variety of stimuli. It is represented by the formula S
Signal detection theory	Signal detection theory says that sensation is a judgment that sensory system makes about incoming stimulation.
Retina	The thin, light-sensitive layer at the back of the eyeball. The retina contains millions of photoreceptors and other nerve cells.
Photoreceptors	Light- sensitive cells (neurons) in the retina that convert light energy to neural impulses. The photoreceptors are as far as light gets into visual system.
Rods	Photoreceptors in the retina that are especially sensitive to dim light but not to colors. Strange as it may seem, they are rod-shaped.
Cones	Photoreceptors in the retina that are especially sensitive to colors but not to dim light. You may have guessed that the cones are cone-shaped.
Fovea	The tiny area of sharpest vision in the retina.
Optic nerve	The bundle of neurons that carries visual information from the retina to the brain.
Blind spot	The point where the optic nerve exists the eye and where there are no photoreceptors. Any stimulus that falls on this area cannot be seen.
Brightness	A psychological sensation caused by the intensity of light waves.
Color	Also called hue. Color is not a property of things in the external world. Rather, it is a psychological sensation created in the brain from information obtained by the eyes from the wavelengths of visible light.
Electromagnetic spectrum	The entire range of electromagnetic energy, including radio waves, X rays, microwaves, and visible light.
Visible spectrum	The tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum to which our eyes are sensitive. The visible spectrum of other creatures may be slightly different from our own.
Trichromatic theory	The idea that colors are sensed by three different types of cones sensitive to light in the red, blue, and green wavelengths. The trichromatic theory explains the earliest stage of color sensation.
Opponent-process theory	The idea that cells in the visual system process colors in complementary pairs, such as red or green or as yellow or blue. The opponent-process theory explains color sensation from bipolar cells onward in the visual system.
Afterimages	Sensations that linger after the stimulus is removed. Most visual afterimages are negative afterimages, which appear in reversed colors.
Color blindness	Typically a generic disorder (although sometimes the result of trauma, as in the case of Jonathon) that prevents an individual from discriminating certain colors. The most common form is red-green color blindness.
Frequency	The number of cycles completed by a wave in a given amount of time, usually a second.
Amplitude	The physical strength of a wave. This is usually measured from peak (top) to valley (bottom) on a graph of the wave.
Tympanic membrane	The eardrum.
Cochlea	The primary organ of hearing; a coiled tube in the inner ear, where sound waves are transduced into nerve messages.
Basilar membrane	A thin strip of tissue sensitive to vibrations in the cochlea. The basilar membrane contains hair cells connected to neurons. When a sound wave causes the hair cells to vibrate, the association neurons become excited (transduced) into nerve activity.
Pitch	A sensory characteristics of sound produced by the frequency of the sound wave.
Loudness	A sensory characteristic of sound produced by the amplitude (intensity) of the sound wave.
Timbre	The quality of a sound wave that derives from the waves complexity (combination of pure tones). Timbre comes from the Greek word for “drum” as does the term tympanic membrane, or eardrum.
Conduction deafness	An inability to hear resulting from damage to structures of the middle or inner ear.
Nerve deafness	The inability to hear, linked to a deficit in the body’s ability to transmit impulses from the cochlea to the brain, usually involving the auditory nerve or higher auditory processing centers.
Vestibular	The sense of body orientation with respect to gravity. The vestibular sense is closely associated with the inner ear and, in fact, is carried to the brain on a branch of the auditory nerve.
Kinesthetic sense	The sense of body position and movement of body parts relative to each other (also called kinesthesis).
Olfaction	The sense of smell.
Phermones	Chemical signals released by organisms to communicate with other members of their species. Phermones are often used by animals as sexual attractions. It is unclear whether humans employ phermones.
Gate-control theory	An explanation for pain control that proposes we have a neural “gate” that can, under some circumstances, block incoming pain signals.
Placebo effect	A response to a placebo (a fake drug) caused by the subjects’ belief that they are taking real drugs.
Percept	The meaningful product of perception- often an image that has been associated with concepts, memories of events, emotions, and motives.
Feature detectors	Cells in the cortex that specialize in extracting certain features of a stimulus.
Binding problem	The process used by the brain to combine the results of many sensory operations into a single percept.
Bottom-up processing	Perceptual analysis that emphasizes characteristics of the stimulus, rather than our concepts and expectations. “Bottom” refers to the stimulus, which occurs at step one of the perceptual processing.
Top-down processing	Perceptual analysis that emphasizes the perceiver’s expectations, concept memories, and other cognitive factors.
Perceptual constancy	The ability to recognize the same object as remaining “constant” under different conditions, such as changes in illumination, distance, or location.
Illusion	A demonstrably incorrect perception of a stimulus pattern, especially one that also fools others who are observing the same stimulus.
Ambiguous figures	Images that are capable of more than one interpretation. There is no “right” way to see an ambiguous figure.
Gesalt psychology	From a German word (pronounced gush-TAWLT) that means “whole” or “form” or “configuration.” (A Gesalt is also a percept.) The Gesalt psychologists believed that much of perception is shaped by innate factors built into the brain.
Figure	The part of a pattern that commands attention. The figure stands out against the ground.
Ground	The part of a pattern that does not command attention; the background.
Closure	The Gesalt principle that identifies the tendency to fill in gaps in figures and to see incomplete figures as complete.
Law of perceptual grouping	The Gesalt principles of similarity, proximity, continuity, and common fate. These “laws” suggest how our brains prefer to group stimulus elements together to form a percept (Gesalt).
Law of similarity	The Gesalt principle that we tend to group similar objects together in our perceptions.
Law of proximity	The Gesalt principle that we tend to group objects together when they are near each other. Proximity means “nearness.”
Law of continuity	The Gesalt principle that we prefer perceptions of connected and continuous figures to disconnected and disjoined ones.
Law of common fate	The Gesalt principle that we tend to group similar objects together that share a common motion or destination.
Law of Pragnanz	The most general Gesalt principle, which states that the simplest organization, requiring the least cognitive effort, will emerge as the figure.
Binocular cues	Information taken in by both eyes that aids in depth perception, including binocular convergence and retinal disparity.
Monocular cues	Information about depth that relies on the input of just one eye- includes relative size, light, and shadow, interposition, relative motion, and atmospheric perception.
Learning-based inference	The view that perception is primarily shaped by learning (or experience), rather than by innate factors.
Perceptual set	readiness to detect a particular stimulus in a given context- as when a person who is afraid interprets an unfamiliar sound in the night as a threat.

Created by: Mr. Tusow on 2011-05-01

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AP Psychology-Ch 4

Chapter 4 Vocabulary