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Psychology 3
Chapter 3
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Attention | Conscious awareness; can be focused on events that are taking place in the environment or inside our minds. |
| Sensation | The process through which our sense organs transduce environmental energies such as light and sound into neural impulses. |
| Transduction | The process through which our sense organs convert environmental energies into neural impulses. |
| Perception | The process through which we interpret sensory info. |
| Psychophysics | The study of how the mind interprets the physical properties of stimuli. |
| Absolute threshold | The minimum intensity of a stimulus at which participants can identify its presence 50% of the time. |
| Signal detection | A method of analyzing the relative proportions of hits and false alarms to eliminate the effects of response bias in a participant's detection of a stimulus. |
| (JND) Just noticeable difference | The minimum change in intensity of a stimulus that participants can detect 50% of the time. |
| Weber's law | A psychophysical formula used to predict the JND of a given stimulus. /_\I/=k, where /_\I is the change in the stimulus required to produce a JND, I is the original intensity of the stimulus, and k is a constant that varies for each of the five senses. |
| Subliminal | When the intensity of a stimulus is below the participant's absolute threshold and the participant is not consciously aware of the stimulus. |
| Wavelength | Aphysical property of some energies that corresponds to the distance between the wave peaks. |
| Amplitude | A physical property of some energies that corresponds to the height of the wave peaks. |
| Visible spectrum | The spectrum of light that humans can see. |
| Hue | The color of light. |
| Brightness | The intensity of light; it corresponds to the amplitude of light waves. |
| Saturation | The purity of light; pure light or saturated light consists of a single wavelength. |
| Pupil | The hole in the iris through which light enters the eye. |
| Lens | The part of the eye that lies behind the pupil and focuses light rays on the retina. |
| Accommodation | The process through which the lens is stretched or squeezed to focus light on the retina. |
| Retina | The structure at the back of the eye that contains cells that transduce light into neural signals. |
| Rods | The light-sensitive cells of the retina that pick up any type of light energy and convert it into neural signals. |
| Cones | The cells of the retina that are sensitive to specific colors of light and send info to the brain concerning the colors we are seeing. |
| Optic nerve | The structure that conveys visual info away from the retina to the brain. |
| Blindspot | The point where the optic nerve leaves the retina and where there are no rods or cones. |
| Photopigments | Light-sensitive chemicals that create electrical changes when they come into contact with the light. |
| Dark adaptation | The process through which our eyes adjust to dark conditions after having been exposed to bright light. |
| Light adaptation | The process through which our eyes adjust to bright light after having been exposed to darkness. |
| Trichromatic theory of color vision | The idea that color vision is made possible by the presence of three different types of cones in the retina that react, respectively, to either red, green, or blue light. |
| Color blindness | A condition in which a person cannot perceive one or more colors because of a lack of specific cones in the retina. |
| Cycle | A physical characteristic of energy defined by a wave peak and the valley that immediately follows it. |
| Frequency | A physical characteristic of energy defined as the number of cycles that occur in a given unit of time. |
| Pitch | The psychophysical property of sound that corresponds to the frequency of a sound wave. |
| Loudness | The psychophysical property of sound that corresponds to the amplitude of a sound wave. |
| (dB) Decibels | The unit of measure used to determine the loudness of a sound. |
| Cochlea | The curled, fluid-filled tube that connects the basilar membrane in the inner ear. |
| Basilar membrane | The structure of the cochlear duct that contains the hair cells, which transduce sound waves into action potentials. |
| Hair cells | Neurons that grow out of the basilar membrane and transduce sound waves into action potentials. |
| Auditory nerve | The nerve that carries info from the inner ear to the brain. |
| Place theory | Proposes that our brain decodes pitch by noticing the region of the basilar membrane is most active. |
| Frequency theory | Proposes that our brain decodes pitch directly from the frequency at which the hair cells of the basilar membrane are firing. |
| Volley theory | Proposes that our brain decodes pitch by noticing the frequency at which groups of hair cells on the basilar membrane are firing. |
| Duplicity theory | Proposes that a combination of volley and place theory explains how our brains decode pitch. |
| Gustation | The sense of taste. |
| Papillae | Bumps on the tongue that many people mistake for taste buds. |
| Taste buds | The sense organs for taste that are found between the papillae on the tongue. |
| Olfaction | The sense of smell. |
| Olfactory epithelium | A special piece of skin at the top of the nasal cavity that contains the olfactory receptors. |
| Lock-and-key theory | Proposes that olfactory receptors are excited by odor molecules in a fashion that is similar to how neurotransmitters excite receptor sites. |
| Pheromones | Airborne chemicals that are released from glands and detected by the vomeronasal organs in some animals and perhaps humans. |
| Dermis | The inner layer of skin that contains most of the touch receptors. |
| Epidermis | The outer layer of skin that contain some touch receptors. |
| Kinesthesis | The ability to sense the position of our body parts in relation to one another and in relation to space. |
| Vestibular sense | The sense of balance. |
| Top-down perceptual processing | Perception that is guided by prior knowledge or expectations. |
| Bottom-up perceptual processing | Perception that is not guided by prior knowledge or expectations. |
| Binocular depth cues | Depth cues that utilize info from both eyes. |
| Retinal despairity | A binocular depth cue that uses the difference in the images projected on the right and left retinas to inform the brain about the distance of a stimulus. |
| Monocular depth cues | Depth cues that require info from only one eye. |
| Gestalt approach | A psychological school of thought originating in Germany that proposed that the whole of a perception must be understood rather than trying to deconstruct perception into its parts. |
| Figure-ground | A Gestalt principle of perception that states that when we perceive a stimulus, we visually pull the figure part of the stimulus forward while visually pushing backward the background, or ground, part of the stimulus. |
| Closure | A Gestalt principle of perception that states when we look at a stimulus, we have a tendency to see it as a closed shape, rather than lines. |
| Proximity | A Gestalt principle of perception that states that when we tend to group close objects together during perception. |
| Similarity | A Gestalt principle of perception that states that when we tend to group like objects together during perception. |
| Good continuation | A Gestalt principle of perception that states that when we have a preference for perceiving stimuli that seem to follow one another as being part of a continuing pattern. |
| Feature detection theory | A theory of perception that proposes the existence of feature detectors or cortical cells that only fire when we see certain visual stimuli such as shapes, colors of light, or movements. |
Created by:
cpruett8
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