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PSY 201: Chapter 4

Sensation and Perception

QuestionAnswer
Synesthesia The perceptual experience of one sense that's evoked by another sense
Sensation Simple stimulation of a sense organ
Perception The organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation
Transduction What takes place 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
Just noticeable difference (JND) The minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected
Weber's law The JND of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity
Signal detection theory An observation that 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 response 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
Retina Light-sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball
Accommodation The process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina
Cones Photoreceptors that detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail
Rods Photoreceptors that become active under low-light conditions for night vision
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 because the corresponding area of the retina contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light
Receptive field The region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the neuron's firing rate
Trichromatic color representation The pattern of responding across the three types of cones that provides a unique code for each color
Color-opponent system Pairs of visual neurons that work in opposition
Area V1 The part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex
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 conjunction A perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined
Feature integration theory The idea that focused attention isn't required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus but is required to bind those individual features together
Perceptual constancy A perceptual principle stating that even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains constant
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
Binocular disparity The difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth
Apparent motion The perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing in rapid succession in different locations
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
Loudness A sound's intensity
Timbre A listener's experience of sound quality or resonance
Cochlea A fluid-filled tube that's 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 The portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex
Place code The cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane
Temporal code The cochlea registers 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 Feeling of pain when sensory information from internal and external areas converges on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord
Gate-control theory A theory of pain perception based on the idea that 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
Olfactory receptor neurons (ORNs) Receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell
Olfactory bulb A brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobes
Pheromones Biochemical odorants emitted by other members of its species that can affect an animal's behavior or physiology
Taste buds The organ of taste transduction
Created by: 100000033006215
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