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Psych Ch 5
Term | Description |
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Sensation | the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment |
Perception | process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting our sensations |
Top down processing | relating your stored knowledge to the sensory input (prosopagnasia) |
Psychophysics | the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them |
Bottom Up processing | analysis that begins with the sense receptors and works up to the brian's integration of sensory info |
absolute threshold | the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time |
Signal detection Theory | predicts how and when we detect the presence of a faint stiumulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes there is no single abs. thresh and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and level of fatig |
Subliminal | below ones abs thresh for concious awareness |
Y or N on subliminal messages? | May be affected, process info w/out being aware. Sub sensatin but not PERSUASION |
Difference Threshold aka JND | the minimum difference a person can detect between any two stimuli; increases with magnitude of stim |
Weber's Law | For the average person to perceive a diff, the diff must be in proportion 8% lights, 2% weights, .3% freq |
Sensory adaptation | diminished sensitivity as a consequence of an unchanging stimulus (our nerve cells start to fire less frequently) |
Sensory transduction | sensory systems convert stimulus energy into neural messages |
Wavelength | the distance from one wave peak to the next |
hue | the color we experience |
intensity | the amount of energy in light waves (determined by lights amplitude or height) |
Pupil | where light enters |
iris | regulates amt of light entering eye, colored portion of the eye, controls size of pupil opening |
Lens | Behind pupil that changed shape to focus images on the retina |
accomodation | the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus the image of near objects on the retina |
Acuity | sharpness of vision |
nearsightedness | nearby objects are seen more clearly than distant objects bc the lens focuses the image of distant objects in front of the retina |
farsightedness | faraway objects are seen more clearly than near objects bc the image of near objects is focused behind the retina |