Psychology: Measuring Sensation
Terms
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- he perceptual experience of one sense that is evoked by another sense
- Synesthesia
- the organization, identification, and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation
- Perception
- what takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into neural signals sent to the central nervous system
- Transduction
- simple awareness due to the stimulation of a sense organ
- Sensation
- methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer’s sensitivity to that stimulus
- Psychophysics
- he minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus
- Absolute Threshold
- the minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected
- Just Noticeable DIfference (JND)
- the just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity
- Weber's Law
- an observation that the response to a stimulus depends both on a person’s sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person’s response criterion
- Signal Detection Theory
- sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions
- Sensory Adaption
- the ability to see fine detail
- visual acuity
- light sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball
- Retina
- process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina
- Accommodation
- Photoreceptors that detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail
- Cones
- Photoreceptors that become active only under low-light conditions for night vision
- Rods
- an area of the retina where vision is the clearest and there are no rods at all
- Fovea
- an area of the retina that contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light
- Blind Spot
- the region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the firing rate of that neuron
- Receptive Field
- pattern of responding across the three types of cones that provide a unique code for each color
- Trichromatic Color Representation
- pairs of visual neurons that work on opposition
- color-opponent system
- the part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex
- Area V1
- the inability to recognize objects by sight
- Visual-Form Agnosia
- a perceptual principle stating that even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains consistent
- Perceptual Constancy
- a mental representation that can be directly compared to a viewed shape in the retinal image
- Template
- the difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provides information about depth
- Binocular Disparity
- a depth cue based on the movement of the head over time
- Motion Parallax
- the perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing in rapid succession in different locations
- Apparent Motion
- ability to store and retrieve information
- memory
- the process by which we transform what we perceive, think, or tell into an enduring memory
- encoding
- the process of maintaining information in memory over time
- storage
- the process of bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored
- retrieval
- process of actively relating new information to knowledge that is already in memory
- elaborative encoding
- the process of storing new information by converting it into mental pictures
- visual imagery encoding
- the act of categorizing information by noticing the relationships among a series of items
- Organizational Encoding
- process of maintaining information in memory over time
- memory storage
- place in which sensory information is kept for a few seconds or less
- sensory memory store
- a fast decaying store of visual information
- iconic memory
- fast decaying store of auditory information
- echoic memory
- a place where non-sensory information is kept for more than a few seconds but less than a minute
- short term memory store
- the process of keeping information in short term memory y mentally repeating it
- Rehearsal
- combining small peices of inforamtion into larger clusters or chunks that are more easily held in short-term memory
- Chunking
- active maintenance of information in short-term storage
- Working Memory
- a place in which information can be kept for hours, days, weeks, or years
- long term memory store
- the inability to transfer new information from the short term store into the long-term store
- anterograde amnesia
- the inability to retrieve information that was acquired before a particular date usually the date of an injury or operation
- retrograde amnesia
- an enhanced ability to think of a stimulus such as a word or object, as a result of a recent exposure to the stimulus
- priming
- a network of associated facts and concepts that make up our general knowledge of the world
- semantic memory
- the collection of past personal experiences that occurred at a personal experiences that occurred at a particular time and place
- episodic memory
- forgetting what occurs with the passage of time
- Transience
- Situations in which later learning impairs memory for information acquired earlier
- Retroactive Interference
- Situations in which earlier learning impairs memory for information acquired later
- Proactive Interference
- a lapse in attention that results in memory failure
- Absentmindedness
- remembering to do things in the future
- Prospective Memory
- a failure to retrieve information that is avialible in memory even though you are trying to produce it
- Blocking
- the temporary inability to retrieve information that is stored in memory, accompanied by the feeling that you are on the verge of recovering the information
- Tip-of-the-Tongue Experience
- assigning a recollection or an idea to the wrong source
- Memory Misattribution
- recall of when, where, and how information was acquired
- Source Memory
- a feeling of familiarity about something that hasn't been encountered before
- False Recognition
- the tendency to incorporate misleading information from external sources into personal recollections
- Suggestibility
- the distorting influences of present knowledge, beliefs, and feelings on recollection of previous experiences
- Bias
- type of bias in which people reconstruct the past to fit what they presently know or believe
- Consistency Bias
- type of bias that exaggerates differences between the past and present
- Change Bias
- type of bias in which we distort the past to make us look better
- Egocentric Bias
- the intrusive recollection of events that we wish we could forget
- Persistence
- Detailed recollections of when and where we heard about shocking events
- Flashbulb Memories