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Sensation/Perception
Vocabulary for Theme 3b
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| 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 a 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 in 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 body 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 | An ability to gain information by some means other than the ordinary senses. |