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Sensation/Perception
AP Psych
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| sensation | a stimulus or any change in the environment to which you respond to, a sensation occurs anytime a stimulus activates sensory receptors |
| selective attention | we pick and choose subconsciously what we want to pay attention to, we focus on a particular stimulus that satisfies a need, is strange or novel, or is interesting to us |
| feature extraction | paying attention to outstanding features, picking apart objects by their characteristics rather than the whole object |
| top-down processing | progressing from the whole to individual elements, recognizing the whole when pieces are missing (whole 1st --> pieces 2nd) |
| distal stimuli | perceiving real objects in the environment through our senses |
| proximal stimuli | how/what your brain perceives about those objects (what we think should be there), makes us vulnerable to illusions |
| bottom-up processing | figuring out what something is from individual elements that are actually there and then used to form the whole, figuring things out by putting pieces together (pieces 1st --> whole 2nd) |
| change blindness | failure to notice changes in your environment because of a distraction/selective attention, often used by magicians (ex. magician making you look at something else while he does the trick) |
| inattentional blindness | failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere (ex. counting basketball passes --> don't see gorilla) |
| absolute threshold | if there is any less of a stimulus you wouldn't notice it, minimum amount of stimulus needed to produce sensation, hard to determine since we experience senses at the same time and has different thresholds |
| threshold | amount of stimulus needed for a person to sense all of it, discovered by using a low level of light, sound smell, etc. and increasing it until there is a response |
| difference threshold (just-noticeable difference) | the smallest change in a stimulus that can be sensed between 2 stimuli, relies on Weber's law, can be increased/decreased, depends on overall % change rather than smallest amount |
| Weber's law | change in a stimulus needs to be more than a 2% difference than it previously was, the larger/stronger a stimulus, the larger the change needs to be, some people are more sensitive to change than others |
| signal detection theory | studies detectability, your ability to detect the presence of one stimuli in the presence of conflicting stimuli, impacted by past experiences, size, expectations, the stronger a stimulus is--the more likely you are to notice it |
| cocktail party effect | you are selectively attending to one conversation at a loud party but also able to detect your name being called from across the room |
| transduction | converting energy from stimuli in our environment into neural impulses for the brain to process, all senses do this, occurs in cochlea (ears) and retina (eyes) |
| iris | colored part of the eye that controls the size of the pupil to regulate how much light enters the eye |
| pupil | opening in the center of the iris that controls how much light enters the eye, contracts/dilates depending on light levels |
| retina | contains rods and cones (photoreceptors) that detect light and convert it into electrical signals (transduction) |
| 2 types of photoreceptors | rods and cones |
| rods | sensitive to lower levels of light, used for night vision, detects black/white/grey, you have more rods than cones |
| cones | need more light to be able to respond, works best during the day/in bright light, helps us see colors, you have less cones than rods |
| fovea | where the sharpest rods and cones are located, helps us see the brightest and most vivid colors |
| blind spot | point in the optic nerve where neural information/impulses exit the eye, contains no photoreceptors which prevents you from seeing from there |
| trichromatic theory (Young-Helmholtz) | there are 3 different types of cones in the retina that detect 3 primary colors (red, blue, green); all cones are activated in different combinations to help us see all visual colors |
| opponent process theory | photoreceptor cells have 3 complementary pairs (red-green, yellow-blue, black-white); if you stare at one color for a while, you fatigue the sensors for that color and when you look away, you see that color's complementary pair (suppresses other) |
| hue | the color of light, determined by wavelengths |
| intensity | brightness of the light, determined by amplitude |
| how we see color | visible objects reflect the light of the color you see and it absorbs all the other colored light (ex. broccoli is green because it reflects green light and absorbs the other colors) |
| white | reflects all colors |
| black | absorbs all colors |
| short wavelengths | bluish colors |
| long wavelengths | reddish colors |
| lens/cornea | focuses/bends light onto the retina so that images are clear, changes shape to adjust to images that are near/far away |
| optic nerve | carries visual information from the eye to the brain through electrical impulses |
| retinal disparity | occurs from each eye receiving a slightly different image due to their position on your face, binocular cue, helps us see in 3D, the brain compares images from both retinas and computes an object's distance |
| ear drum | contains tiny bones called ossicles (hammer, anvil, stirrup) that vibrate in the middle ear and push against the cochlea, part of middle ear |
| cochlea | fluid filled tube that has tiny hairs in its basilar membrane, transfers sound vibrations into neural impulses (transduction) |
| place pitch theory | hairs in the cochlea's basilar membrane respond to different frequencies of sound (some hairs bend to high frequencies, others bend to low frequencies); senses pitch based on where in the basilar membrane the hairs are moving |
| frequency pitch theory | says that hair cells in the cochlea all vibrate at once, the rate (frequency) at which the cells fire/vibrate causes us to perceive a higher/lower pitch |
| auditory localization | both ears work together to process sound, when a noise occurs on your right the sound goes to both ears but the right ear gets it louder and slightly sooner than the left ear, allows you to determine which direction a sound is coming from |
| conduction deafness | happens when movement of sound waves is hindered in the outer/middle ear, sound can't move inward, normal hearing aid helps fix this by picking up sound and magnifying it to the inner ear |
| sensorineural deafness | damage to the inner ear (cochlea, basilar membrane, hair cells), cochlear implants help fix this -- surgically implanted to the cochlea that changes sound waves into electrical signals to send to the inner ear using a sound processor |
| sensory interaction | the principle that one sense may influence another (ex. smell of cinnamon makes you taste it) |
| olfactory bulb | receives sensory input from olfactory receptors in the nose and begins to process it to then send to the cortex |
| olfactory receptors | activated by and detect odorant molecules and send electrical signals to the olfactory bulb |
| smell & memory | there is a hotline that runs between the olfactory bulb and the hippocampus/limbic system, causing us to associate certain smells with certain memories |
| thalamus | the brain's primary relay station that processes and sends sensory information (except smell) to the cerebral cortex and other parts of the brain |
| kinesthesia | system that allows us to sense the position and movement of our body parts through our muscles and joint receptors that allows us to coordinate movement without consciously looking (ex. typing on a keyboard without looking at the keys) |
| vestibular sense | the sense of body movement and position, including balance/posture through the inner ear |
| gate-control theory of pain | the spinal cord has a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to travel to the brain, opened by activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or information coming from brain |
| endorphins | the body's natural painkiller that helps detect and control how much pain you feel |
| Gestalt theory | organizing pieces of information into a meaningful whole, assumes the whole is more important than the parts, explains how we group sensation, helps fill in gaps to make sense of things |
| proximity | we group sensations together that are physically close to each other |
| similarity | grouping sensation by how alike they are (ex. all altos in one section, sopranos in another) |
| continuity | idea that if we can't see the end of a sensation, we assume it goes on forever (ex. traffic, the ocean) |
| simplicity | we group sensations together that are simple/easy to group (ex. tall & short, boys & girls) |
| closure | we subconsciously fill in gaps to get close/complete the whole, relies on past experiences (ex. dot-to-dot picture |
| phi phenomenon | similar to (but different from) Gestalt theory, the illusion of movement is created by presenting visual stimuli in quick succession (ex. animated movies, flip-book drawings, Christmas lights) |
| perceptual set | tendency to perceive or notice some aspects of sensory information and ignore others |
| figure ground perception | the ability to discriminate between a figure and its background, 2D pictures are harder to experience, needed for sight and sound, relies on signal detection theory |
| perceptual constancy | perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, color, brightness) as illumination and retinal images change (ex. knowing the walls of your room are blue but they look white in the dark) |
| depth perception | the ability to see objects in 3D although the images that strike the retina are in 2D, allows us to judge distance |
| monocular cues | available to either eye by itself, relative size/clarity (larger/clearer objects are nearer), linear perspective (parallel lines meet in distance), motion parallax ("movement" of objects when you move head) |
| monocular cues #2 | light & shadows (cues depth, brighter - nearer, shadowed - far away), texture-density (farther away an object is, less detail we see) |
| binocular cues | retinal disparity, convergence (eyes turn inward to look at nearby objects), depend on the use of 2 eyes |
| relative height | monocular cue, objects that are farther away are higher on your plane of vision |
| interposition | if object A is between you and object B, you are aware that object A is closer to you |
Created by:
ts2819