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Psychology Chapter 5
Stack #49850
Question | Answer |
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The elememtary components, or building blocks, of an experience (such as pattern of light and dark, a bitter taste, or a change in temprerature). | sensations |
The collection of processes used to arrive at a meaningful interpretation of sensations. | perceptions |
A small part of the electromagnetic spectrum that is processed by the visual system. | light |
The dimension of light that produces color; is typically determined by the wavelength of light reflecting from an object. | hue |
The aspect of the visual experience that changes with light intensity; in general, as the intensity of light increases, so does its percieved -. | brightness |
The three main physical properties of light. | Wavelength, intensity, and purity |
The process by which external messages are translated into the internal language of the brain. | transduction |
The transparent and protective outer covering of the eye. | The cornea |
The flexible piece of tissue that helps focus light toward the back of the eye. | The lens |
The hole in the center of the eye that allows light to enter. | The pupil |
The ring of colored tissue surrounding the pupil. | The iris |
The process through which the lens changes its shape temporarily to help focus light on the retina. | accommodation |
The thin layer of tissue that covers the back of the eye and contains the light-sensitive receptor cells for vision. | The retina |
Receptor cells in the retina, located mainly around the sides, that transduce light energy into neural messages; these visual receptors are highly sensitive and are active in dim light. | rods |
Receptor cells in the central portion of the retina that transduce light evergy into neural messages; they operate best when light levels are high, and they are primarily responsible for the ability to sense color. | cones |
The "central pit" area in the retina where the cone receptors are located. | The fovea |
The ability to process fine detail in vision. | Visual acuity |
The portion of the retina that, when stimulated, causes the activity of higher order neurons to change. | receptive field |
The point where the optic nerve leaves the back of the eye. | Blind spot |
The process through which the eyes adjust to dim light. | dark adaption |
Cells in the visual cortex that respond to very specific visual events, soch as bars of light at a particular orientation. | feature detectors |
A theory of color vision proposing that color information is extracted by comparing the relative activations of three different types of cone receptors. | Trichromatic theory |
A theory of color vision proposing that cells in the visual pathway increase their activation levels to one color and decrease their activation levels to another color - for example, increasing to red and decreasing to green. | Opponent-process theory |
The men who proposed the trichromatic theory. | Thomas Young and Hermann von Helmholtz |
The man who proposed the opponent-process theory. | Ewald Hering |
Processing that is controlled by the physical message delivered to the senses. | Bottom-up processing |
Processing that is controlled by one's beliefs and expectations about how the world is organized. | Top-down processing |
The organizing principles of perception proposed by the Gestalt psychologists. | Gestalt principles of organization |
The Gestalt principles of organization include the laws of -. | proximity, similarity, closure, continuation, and common fate. |
The idea that people recognize objects perceptually via smaller components called geons. | recognition by components |
The man who proposed "recognition by components." | Irving Biederman |
Cues for depth that require input from only one eye. | Monocular depth cues |
Cues for depth that depend on comparisons between the two eyes. | Binocular depth cues |
A binocular cue for depth that is based on location differences between images in each eye. | Retinal disparity |
A binocular cue for depth that is based on the extent to which the two eyes move inward, or converge, when looking at an object. | Convergence |
The illusion of movement that occurs when stationary lights are flashed in succession. | phi phenomenon |
Percieving the properties of an object to remain the same even though the physical properties of the sensory message are changing. | Perceptual constancy |
Innappropriate interpretations of physical reality. | Perceptual illusions |
The physical message delivered to the auditory system; a mechanical evergy that requires a medium such as air or water in order to move. | Sound |
The psychological experience that results from the auditory processing of a particular frequency of sound. | Pitch |
The external flap of tissue normally referred to as the "ear"; it helps capture sounds. | The pinna |
The eardrum, which responds to incoming sound waves by vibrating. | The tympanic membrane |
The protion between the eardrum and the cochlea containing three small bones (the malleus, incus, and stapes) that help to intensify and prepare the sound vibrations for passage into the inner ear. | Middle ear |
The bony, snail-shaped sound processor in the inner ear where sound is translated into nerve impulses. | The cochlea |
A flexible membrane running through the cochlea that, through its movement, displaces the auditory cells, or hair cells. | The basilar membrane |
The idea that the location of auditory receptor cells activated by movement of the basilar membrane underlies the perception of pitch. | Place theory |
The idea that pitch perception is determined partly by the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory pathway. | Frequency theory |
Neurons that respond to a cooling of the skin by increasing the production of neural impulses. | Cold fibers |
Neurons that respond vigorously when the temperature of the skin increases. | Warm fibers |
An adaptive response by the body to any stimulus that is intense enough to cause tissue damage. | Pain |
The idea that neural impulses generated by pain receptors can be blocked, or gated, in the spinal cord by signals produced in the brain. | Gate-control theory |
The ability to sense the position and movement of one's body parts. | Kinesthesia |
A receptor system attached to the inner ear that responds to movement and acceleration and to changes in upright posture. | Semicircular canals |
Organs of the inner ear that contain receptors thought to be primarily responsible for balance. | Vestibular sacs |
Receptor cells that react to invisible molecules scattered about in the air or dissolved in liquids, leading to the senses of smell and taste. | chemoreceptors |
The sense of smell. | olfaction |
The sense of taste. | gustation |
A psychological term used to describe the gustatory experience. | flavor |
Ther receptor cells on the tongue. | taste buds |
A field of psychology in which researchers search for ways to describe the transition from the physical stimulus to the psychological experience of that stimulus. | psychophysics |
The level of intensity that lifts a stimulus over the threshold of conscious awareness; it's usually defined as the intensity level at which people can detect the presence of the stimulus 50% of the time. | absolute threshold |
A technique used to determine the ability of someone to detect the presence of a stimulus. | signal detection |
The smallest detectable difference in teh magnitude of two stimuli. | difference threshold |
The principle stating that the more intense a stimulus is to begin with, the more intense it will need to become for one to notice the change. | Weber's law |
The tendency of sensory systems to reduce sensitivity to a stimulus source that remains constant. | sensory adaption |