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Chapter 8
Sensation and Perception
Term | Definition |
---|---|
Senstaion | What occurs when a stimulas activates a receptor |
Perception | The organization of sensory information into meaningful expressions |
Psychophysics | The study of the relationships between sensory experiences and the physical stimuli that cause them |
Absolute Threshold | The weakest amount of a stimulus that a person can detect half the time |
Different Threshold | The smallest change in a physical stimulus that can be detected between two stimuli |
Weber's Law | The principle that for any change in a stimuli to be detected, a constant proportion of that stimulus must be added or subtracted |
Signal-Detection Theory | The study of people's tendencies to make correct judgements in detecting the presence of stimuli |
Pupil | The opening in the iris that regulates the amount of light entering the eye |
Lens | A flexible, elastic, transparent structure in the eye that changes its shape to focus light on the retina |
Retina | The innermost coating of the back of the eye, containing the light-sensitive receptor cells |
Optic Nerve | The nerve that carries impulses from the retina to the brain |
Binocular Fusion | The process of combining the images received from the two eyes into a single, fused image |
Retinal Disparity | The differences between the images stimulating each eye |
Auditory Nerve | The nerve that carries impulses from the inner ear to the brain, resulting in the perception of sound |
Vestibular System | Three semicircular canals that provide the sense of balance, located in the inner ear and connected to the brain by a nerve |
Olfactory Nerve | The never that carries smell impulses from the nose to the brain |
Kinesthesis | The sense of movement and body position |
Gestalt | The experience that comes from organizing bits and pieces of information into meaningful wholes |
Subliminal Messages | Brief auditory or visual messages that are presented below the absolute threshold |
Motion Parallax | The apparent movement of stationary objects relative to one another that occurs when the observer changes position |
Constancy | The tendency to perceive certain objects in the same way regardless of changing angle, distance, or lighting |
Illusions | Perceptions that misrepresent physical stimuli |
Extrasensory Perception (ESP) | An ability to gain information by some means other than the ordinary senses |