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Sens & perception
AP Psychology Unit IV Module 16-21
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Sensation | the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment |
| Perception | the process of ongoing and interpreting sensory information |
| Bottom-up Processing | the process of 'sensation', whereby the input of sensory information from the external environment is received by our sensory receptors |
| Top-down Processing | perceiving the world around us by drawing from what we already know in order to interpret new information |
| Selective Attention | allows one to focus on certain specific sensory information, while ignoring other sensory input |
| Cocktail Party Effect | the phenomenon of the brain's ability to focus one's auditory attention on a particular stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli, such as when a partygoer can focus on a single conversation in a noisy room |
| Inattentional Blindness | failures to notice unexpected objects and events when attention is otherwise engaged |
| Change Blindness | the failure to notice significant changes in our environment |
| Transduction | conversion of one form of energy into another, as when environmental stimuli are transformed into neural signals |
| Psychophysics | a branch of psychology that studies the relationship between the objective physical characteristics of a stimulus (e.g., its measured intensity) and the subjective perception of that stimulus (e.g., its apparent brightness) |
| Absolute Threshold | the smallest amount of stimulation needed for a person to detect that stimulus 50% of the time |
| Signal Detection Theory | predicts when we will detect weak signals (stimuli); this theory negates the idea of absolute thresholds because the purpose is to ascertain why individuals react to the same stimulus differently. |
| Subliminal | a signal or message that is embedded in another medium, designed to pass below the normal limits of the human mind's perception |
| Prime | the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response |
| Choice Blindness | the inability to detect a change between an object/image we have chosen and a similar object/image |
| Difference Threshold | also called "just noticeable difference"; the minimum required difference between two stimuli for a person to notice change 50% of the time |
| Weber's Law | states that the size of the JND (just noticeable difference = difference threshold) is directly proportional to the strength of the original stimulus |
| Sensory Adaptation | a reduction in sensitivity to a stimulus after constant exposure to it; reduces our awareness of a stimulus to it help free up our attention and resources to attend to other stimuli in our environment (all five senses can experience this) |
| Perceptual Set | "mind set" = a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another |
| ESP | extra sensory perception (telepathy, clairvoyance, orecognition, etc.) |
| Parapsychology | the study of paranormal or superhuman experiences and events, such as hauntings, near-death experiences, and alien abductions |
| Wavelength | the distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next |
| Hue | the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light |
| Intensity | the amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, as determined by the wave's amplitude |
| Pupil | the adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters |
| Cornea | the transparent, protective outer layer of the eye that bends light waves to assist in proper focus |
| Iris | a piece of muscle tissue that sits behind the cornea and helps the eye adjust how much light enters. It gives the eye its color |
| Lens | transparent part of the eye behind the iris; focuses light on the retina; change shape to focus on objects;-if object is closed, muscles attach to the land contract to make lens around,-if object is far away, the muscles pull to flatten the lens |
| Accomodation | the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina. rods |
| Retina | the light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information |
| Acuity | the sharpness of vision |
| Retinal Ganglion Cells | the only type of neuron in the retina that serves signals to the brain resulting from visual stimulation |
| Nearsightedness | a condition in which nearby objects are seen more clearly than distant objects because distant objects focus in front of the retina |
| Farsightedness | a condition in which faraway objects are seen more clearly than near objects because the image of near objects is focused behind the retina |
| Rods | visual receptor cell; located in retina; 120 million in each eye; respond to varying degrees of light and dark; chiefly responsible for night vision and perception of brightness |
| Cones | visual receptor cells; located in retina; 8 million in each eye; works best in bright light; chiefly responsible for viewing color; greatest density in the fovea |
| Optic Nerve | the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain |
| Blind Spot | the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, no receptor cells are located there |
| Fovea | the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster |
| Trichromatic Theory | one of the oldest theories about why and how humans see in color and it states that there are three types of cones in the retina that can detect the three colors (hence trichromatic) of blue, green, and red |
| Opponent Process Theory | one emotion elicits a feeling of the opposite emotion; while someone may initiate an argument to release his or her anger, this is not consistent with the opponent process theory of emotion |
| Parallel Processing | the ability of the brain to do many things (aka, processes) at once. (ex. when a person sees an object, they don't see just one thing, but rather many different aspects that together help the person identify the object as a whole) |
| Gestalt | the different ways individuals group stimuli together in order to make a whole that makes sense to them; these principles are divided up into five categories: proximity, similarity, continuity, connectedness, and closure |
| Figure Ground | one of the tools used by our brains to form perception; the organization of the visual field by separating an object (figure) from its surroundings (ground) |
| Grouping | a Gestalt grouping principle; elements that are connected to each other group together |
| Proximity | a Gestalt principle of organization holding that (other things being equal) objects or events that are near to one another (in space or time) are perceived as belonging together as a unit |
| Continuity | Gestalt psychology principle which states that the observer tends to see a line or shape as continuing in a particular direction rather than making a turn |
| Closure | a Gestalt principle of organization holding that there is an innate tendency to perceive incomplete objects as complete and to close or fill gaps and to perceive asymmetric stimuli as symmetric |
| Depth Perception | the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance |
| Visual Cliff | a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals |
| Binocular Cues | depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence, that depend on the use of two eyes |
| Retinal Disparity | the fact that the left and right fields of vision provide slightly different visual images when focusing on a single object; it is a type of binocular visual cue that allows people to perceive depth and distance |
| Convergence | a binocular cue for perceiving depth; the extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an object; the greater the inward strain, the closer the object |
| Monocular Cues | depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone |
| Phi Phenomenon | an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession |
| Perceptual Constancy | perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, lightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change |
| Color Constancy | the tendency to perceive a familiar object as having the same color under different conditions of illumination (ex. a red apple will be perceived as red in well or poorly illuminated surroundings) - example of perceptual constancy. |
| Perceptual Adaptation | the ability of the body to adapt to an environment by filtering out distractions (ex. someone who lives near a train can perceptually adapt such that they can ignore the train whistle in order to sleep at night) |
| Audition | your sense of hearing |
| Frequency | the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time (for example, per second). |
| Pitch | a tone's experienced highness or lowness |
| Middle Ear | the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window |
| Cochlea | where the physical stimuli of the sound wave is converted into a neural impulse; vibrations from the middle ear cause the oval window to vibrate, pushing the fluid inside (the basilar membrane lined with hair cells that are bent by vibrations) |
| Inner Ear | the innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs |
| Place Theory | states that ear hairs respond to different frequencies based on their different locations in the cochlea |
| Frequency Thoery | states that pitch is perceived by the rate at which hair cells fire |
| Conduction Hearing Loss | caused by damage to the system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea; this may be damage done to the eardrum or the middle ear bones (anvil, hammer, stirrup); a hearing aid is used for this less common form of hearing loss |
| Sensorineural Hearing Loss | aka nerve deafness - caused by damage to the cochlea's cells or damage to the auditory nerve; therefore, the signal is transferred to the cochlea, but not to the brain |
| Cochlear Implant | a device for converting sounds into electrical. signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes |
| Touch | a mix of 4 distinct skin senses; pressure, warmth, cold and pain |
| Gate-Control Theory | posits that the spinal cord contains a "gate" that controls whether pain signals get sent to the brain or not; this "gate" is opened based on the strength of the pain signals from the body |
| Sensory Interaction | where our senses interact with one another and influence each other (ex. smell + texture + taste = flavor; when you have a cold & experience pain, your sense of taste may be affected and food could taste bland) |
| Gustation | the mouth's ability to tell the difference between sweet, sour, bitter, and salty properties |
| Olfaction | the sense of smell |
| Kinesthesis | the sense that provides information through receptors in the muscles, tendons, and joints, enabling humans and other animals to control and coordinate their movements, including walking, talking, facial expressions, gestures, and posture |
| Vestibular Sense | your sense of movement, including balance (our semicircular canals and vestibular sacs in the inner ear are responsible for keeping balance) |
| Sensory Interaction | the principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste |
| Embodied Cognition | the influence of bodily sensations on our psychological states (cognitive) (ex. physical warmth often promotes social warmth, and you grow a connection with the person you may be hugging) |
| Olfactory Nerve | the nerve that carries impulses from the olfactory receptors in the nose to the brain |
| Basilar Membrane | a membrane inside the cochlea which vibrates in response to sound and whose vibrations lead to activity in the auditory pathways |
| Gustav Fechner | 1801-1887; Field: perception; Contributions: stated that the magnitude of a sensory experience is proportionate to the # of JND's that the stimulus causing the experiences above the absolute threshold |
| David Hubel | Along with Torsten Wiesel discovered feature detector groups of neurons in the visual cortex that respond to different types of visual images |
| Herman von Helmholtz | theorist who both aided in the development of the trichromatic theory of color perception and Place theory of pitch perception |
| Ernst Weber | 1795-1878; Field: perception; Contributions: just-noticeable-difference (JND) that eventually becomes Weber's law; Studies: 1st study on JND |
| Thomas Young | showed that light, like waves, could be diffracted |
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