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AP Psych Ch. 5 Vocab
Sensation - AP Psychology, Chapter 5
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Bottom-up processing | Receptors pick up information, and the brain processes it |
| Top-down processing | When the brain already knows how a stimulus will feel, taste, etc. |
| Psychophysics | The study of the relationship between physical characteristics of stimuli (such as their actual intensity) and our perception of them (e.g. thresholds and when we pick up on stimuli) |
| Absolute thresholds | The minimum stimulus needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time |
| Signal detection theory | Predicts when we will detect weak signals - there is no single absolute threshold, and detection depends on experience, expectations, motivations, and levels of fatigue |
| Subliminal | Below the threshold |
| Priming | Activating (often unconsciously) certain associations that can affect perception (ex: people rated images more positively when they were preceded by imperceptible images of kittens rather than werewolves) |
| Difference threshold | The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time |
| Weber's law | The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a minimum percentage rather than amount |
| Adaptation | Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation |
| Transduction | The conversion of one form of energy into another (e.g. sights/smells/tastes to neural impulses) |
| Pupil | The opening in the eye through which light enters |
| Iris | A ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye and controls the size of the opening |
| Lens | The transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina |
| Retina | The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye; contains rods, cones, and neurons |
| Accommodation (vision) | The process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina |
| Acuity | Sharpness of vision |
| Farsightedness | A condition in which an individual can see far objects, but not near ones |
| Rods | Detect black, white, and grey; for night and peripheral vision |
| Cones | Detect color and fine detail, concentrated near the center of the retina |
| Optic nerve | Carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain |
| Blind spot | The point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, where no receptor cells are located |
| Fovea | The central focal point in the retina, around which the cones cluster |
| Feature detector | A nerve cell in the brain that responds to specific features of a stimulus, like shape, angle, or movement |
| Parallel processing | Processing several aspects of a problem simultaneously, the brain's natural mode for many functions |
| The Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory | The retina has three types of color receptors: red, green, and blue |
| Opponent process theory | Opposing retinal processes enable color vision (some cells are stimulated by red and inhibited by green, etc) - explains afterimages, which tire out one color's response and only allow its opponent to fire properly when looking at white |
| Frequency | The number of wavelengths passing through a point at a given time (causes pitch) |
| Pitch | A tone's experienced highness or lowness |
| Middle ear | The chamber between the eardrum and the cochlea, contains the three tiny bones that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window) |
| Inner ear | The innermost part of the ear; contains the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs |
| Cochlea | A coiled, bony fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sound waves trigger nerve impulses |
| Place theory | The theory that we hear different pitches because different sounds waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea's basilar membrane |
| Frequency theory | The theory that we hear different pitches because the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone |
| Conduction hearing loss | Hearing loss caused by mechanical damage to the system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea |
| Sensorineural hearing loss | Hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or the auditory nerves |
| Cochlear implant | Converts sound into electrical signals and stimulates the auditory nerve via electrodes in the cochlea |
| Gate control theory | The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that either blocks or allows pain signals to enter the brain |
| Sensory interaction | One sense may influence another (scent enhances the taste of food, seeing lip movements allows us to better understand words) |
Created by:
emilyjane1221
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