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Chapter 8
Understanding Psychology by Richard A. Kasschau, Ph.D.
Question | Answer |
---|---|
sensation | what occurs when a stimulus activates a receptor |
perception | the organization of sensory information into meaningful experiences |
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 |
difference threshold | the smallest change in a physical stimulus that can be detected between two stimuli |
Weber's law | the principle that for any change ( s) in a stimulus to be detected, a constant proportion of that stimulus (s) 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 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 nerve 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 |