Psychology 101 Final
Terms
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- Prosopagnosia
- A form of visual agnosia characterized by difficulty in the recognition of people's faces; caused by damage to the visual association cortex
- Visual agnosia
- The inability of a person who is not blind to recognize the identity of an object visually; caused by damage to the visual association cortex
- Colour Mixing
- The perception of two or more lights of different wavelengths seen together as light of an intermediate wavelength
- Gestalt psychology
- A branch of psychology that asserts that the perception of objects is produced by particular configurations of the elements of stimuli
- somatosense
- Bodily sensations; sensitivity to such stimuli as touch, pain and temperature
- inflection
- A change in the form of word (usually by adding a suffix) to denote a grammatical feature such as tense or number
- rhodopsin
- The photopigment contained by rods
- Fovea
- A small pit near the centre of the retina containing densely packed cones; responsible for the most acute and detailed vision
- Harmonic
- A component of a complex tone; one of series of tones whose frequency is a multiple of the fundamental frequency. In music theory, also known as an overtone
- Achromatopsia
- The inability to discriminate among different hues; caused by damage to the visual association cortex
- Brightness constancy
- the tendency to perceive objects as having constant brightness event when they are observed under varying levels of illumination
- Bottom-up processing
- A perception based on successive analyses of the details of the stimuli that are presented
- ventriloquism effect
- The apparent shift in location of a sound from its auditory source to its perceived visual location
- pure word deafness
- The ability to hear, to speak, and (usually) to write, without being able to comprehend the meaning of speech; caused by bilateral temporal lobe damage
- Saturation
- A perceptual dimension of colour, most closely associated with purity of a colour
- Law of similarity
- A Gestalt law of organization; similar elements are perceived as belonging to the same figure
- semantics
- the meaning and the study of the meanings represented by words
- Child-directed speech
- The speech of an adult directed toward a child; differs in important features from adult directed speech and tends to facilitate learning of language by children
- surface dyslexia
- A reading disorder in which people can read words phonetically but have difficulty reading irregularly spelled words by the whole-word method
- ground
- A visual stimulus that is perceived as a formless background against which objects are seen
- olfaction
- The sense of smell
- phonological dyslexia
- A reading disorder in which people can read familiar words but have difficulty reading unfamiliar words or pronounceable non-words because they cannot sound out words
- vestibular sac
- One of a set of two receptor organs in each inner ear that detect changes in the tilt of the head
- Negative afterimage
- The image seen after a portion of the retina is exposed to an intense visual stimulus; these consists of colours complementary to those of the physical stimulus
- phoneme
- The minimum unit of sound that conveys meaning in a particular language, such as /p/
- Saccadic movement
- The rapid movement of the eyes that is used in scanning a visual scene, as opposed to the smooth pursuit movements used to follow a moving object
- artificial intelligence
- A field of study in which computer programs are designed to simulate human cognitive abilities; this endeavour may help investigators understand the mechanisms that underlie these abilities
- Perception
- The detection of the more complex properties of a stimulus, including its location and nature; involves learning
- Broca's aphasia
- Severe difficulty in articulating words, especially function words, caused by damage that includes Broca's area, a region of the frontal cortex on the left (speech-dominant) side of the brain
- receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC curve)
- A graph of hits and false alarms by participants under different motivational conditions; indicates people's ability to detect a particular stimulus
- Muscle spindle
- A muscle fibre that functions as a strech receptor; arranged parallel to the muscle fibres responsible for contraction of the muscle, it detects muscle length
- rod
- A photoreceptor that is very sensitive to light but cannot detect changes in hue
- hue
- A perceptual dimension of colour, most closely related to the wavelength of a pure light
- auditory hair cell
- The sensory neuron of the auditory system; located on the basilar membrane
- semantic priming
- A facilitating effect on the recognition of words having meanings related to a word that was presented previously
- semicircular canal
- One of a set of three organs in the inner ear that respond to rotational movements of the head
- phi phenomenon
- The perception of movement caused by the turning on of two or more lights, one at a time; often used on theatre marqueesl responsible for the apparent movement of images in movies are television
- bipolar cell
- A neuron in the retina that receives information from photoreceptors and passes it on to the ganglion cells, from which axons proceed through the optic nerve to the brain
- Weber fraction
- The ratio between a just-noticeable difference and the magnitude of a stimulus; reasonably constant over the middle range of most stimulus intensities
- Pacinian corpuscle
- A specialized somatosensory nerve ending, which detects mechanical stimuli, especially vibrations
- agrammatism
- A language disturbance; difficulty in the production and comprehension of grammatical features, such as proper use of function words, word endings, and word order. Often seen in cases of Broca's aphasia
- whole-word reading
- Reading be recognizing a word as a whole; "sight reading"
- Pheromones
- Chemical signals, usually detected by smell or taste, that regulate reproductive and social behaviours between animals
- Receptor cell
- A neuron that directly responds to a physical stimulus, such as light, vibrations, or aromatic molecules
- Photopigment
- A complex molecule found in photoreceptors; when struck by light, it splits apart and stimulates the membrane of the photoreceptor in which it resides
- Round window
- An opening in the bone surrounding the cochlea. Movements of the membrane behind this opening permits vibrations to be transmitted through the oval window into the cochlea
- direct dyslexia
- A language disorder caused by brain damage in which people can read words aloud without understanding them
- Linguistic relativity
- The hypothesis that the language a person speaks is related to his or her thoughts and perceptions
- Receptive field
- The portion of the visual field in which the presentation of visual stimuli will produce an alteration in the firing rate of a particular neuron
- vestibular apparatus
- The receptive organs of the inner ear that contribute to balance and perception of head movement
- Absolute Threshold
- The minimum value of a stimulus that can be detected
- Interposition
- A monocular cue of depth perception; on object that partially blocks another object is perceived as closer
- phonetic reading
- Reading by decoding the phonetic significance of letter strings; "sound reading"
- Transduction
- The conversion of physical stimuli into changes in the activity of receptor cells of sensory organs
- haze
- A monocular cue of depth perception; objects that are less distinct in their outline and texture are seen as farther from the viewer
- prototype
- A hypothetical idealized pattern that resides in the nervous system and is used to perceive objects or shapes by a process of comparison; recognition can occur even when an exact match is not found
- elevation
- A monocular cue of depth perception; objects nearer the horizon are seen as farther from the viewer
- brightness
- A perceptual dimension of colour, most closely related to the intensity or degree of radiant energy emitted by a visual stimulus
- Protanopia
- A form of hereditary anomalous colour vision; caused by defective "red" cones in the retina
- script
- The characteristics (events, rules, and so on) that are typical of a particular situation; assists the comprehension of verbal discourse
- taste bud
- A small organ on the tongue that contains a group of gustatory receptor cells
- unconscious inference
- A mental computation of which we are unaware that plays a role in perception
- surface structure
- The grammatical features of a sentence
- Photoreceptor
- A receptive cell for vision in the retina; a rod or a cone
- fixation
- A brief interval between saccadic eye movement during which the eye does not move; visual information is gathered during this time
- Anatomical coding
- A means by which the nervous system represents information; different features are coded by the activity of different neurons
- free nerve ending
- A dendrite of somatosensory neurons
- Optic disc
- A circular structure located at the exit point from the retina of the axons of the ganglion cells that form the optic nerve
- Retina
- The tissue at the back inside surface of the eye that contains the photoreceptors and associated neurons
- Lens
- The transparent organ situated behind the iris of the eye; helps focus an image on the retina
- underextension
- The use of a word to denote a smaller class of items than is appropriate; for example, referring only to one particular animal as a dog
- Law of closure
- A Gestalt law of organization; elements missing from the outline of a figure are "filled in" by the visual system
- template
- A hypothetical pattern that resides in the nervous system and is used to perceive objects or shapes by process of comparison
- Phantom limb
- Sensations that appear to originate in a limb that has been amputated
- Ganglion cell
- A neuron in the retina that receives information from photoreceptors by means of bipolar cells and from which axons proceed through the optic nerve to the brain
- Pursuit movement
- The movement that the eyes make to maintain an image of a moving object upon the fovea
- Protoword
- A unique string of phonemes that an infant invents and uses as a word
- Trichromatic Theory
- The theory that colour vision is accomplished by three types of photoreceptors. each of which is maximally sensitive to a different wavelength of light
- Timbre
- A perceptual dimension of sound, determined by the complexity of the sound - for example, as shown by a mathematical analysis of the sound wave
- wavelength
- The distance between adjacent waves of radiant energy; in vision, most closely associated with the perceptual dimension of hue
- Oval window
- An opening in the bone surrounding the cochlea. The stirrup presses against a membrane behind this structure and transmits sound vibrations into the fluid within the cochlea
- Cornea
- The transparent tissue covering the front of the eye
- parallel processor
- A computer device that can perform several operations simultaneously
- Gustation
- The sense of taste
- Papilla
- A small bump on the tongue that contains a group of taste buds
- Tachistoscope
- A device that can present visual stimuli for controlled (usually very brief) durations of time
- good continuation
- A Gestalt law of organization; given two or more interpretations of elements that form the outline of the figure, the simplest interpretation will be prefered
- Basilar membrane
- One of two membranes that divide the cochlea of the inner ear into three compartments. The receptive organ for audition resides here
- Wernicke's area
- A region of the auditory association cortex located in the upper part of the left temporal lobe; involved in the recognition of spoken words
- deuternopia
- A form of hereditary anomalous colour vision; caused by defective "green" cones in the retina
- stereopsis
- A form of depth perception based on retinal disparity
- temporal coding
- A means by which the nervous system represents information; different features are coded by the pattern of activity of neurons
- top-down processing
- A perception based on information provided by the context in which a particular stimulus is encountered
- two-point discrimination threshold
- the minimum distance between two small points that can be detected as separate stimuli when pressed against a particular region of the skin
- olfactory mucosa
- The mucous membrane lining the top of the nasal sinuses; contains the cilia of the olfactory receptors
- Chemosense
- One of the two sense modalities (gustation and olfaction) that detect the presence of a particular molecule present in the environment
- content word
- A noun, verb, adjective, or adverb that conveys meaning
- Convergence
- The result of conjugate eye movements whereby the fixation point for each eye is identical; feedback from these movements provides information about the distance of objects from the viewer
- Cone
- A photoreceptor that is responsible for acute daytime vision and for colour perception
- size
- A monocular cue of depth perception based on the retinal size of an object
- just-noticeable difference (jnd)
- The smallest difference between two similar stimuli that can be distinguished.
- isolation aphasia
- A language disturbance that includes an inability to comprehend speech or to produce meaningful speech, accompanied by the ability to repeat speech and to learn new sequences of words; caused by brain damage to the left temporal/parietal cortex that spares Wernicke's area
- cochlea
- A snail-shaped chamber set in bone in the inner ear, where auditory transduction takes place
- Opponent Process
- The representation of colours by the rate of firing of two types of neurons: red/green and yellow/blue
- Iris
- The pigmented muscle of the eye that controls the size of the pupil
- Tectorial membrane
- A membrane located above the basilar membrane; serves as a shelf against which the cilia of the auditory hair cells move
- neural network
- A model of the nervous system based on interconnected network of elements that have some of the properties of neurons
- subliminal perception
- The perception of a stimulus, as indicated by a change in behaviour, at an intensity insufficient to produce a conscious sensation
- Cilium
- A hairlike appendage of a cell; involved in movement or in transducing sensory information. Found on the receptors in the auditory and vestibular systems
- law of common fate
- A Gestalt law of organization; elements that move together give rise to the perception of a particular fate
- deep structure
- The essential meaning of a sentence, without regard to the grammatical features (surface structure) of the sentence that are needed to express it in words
- Perception
- A rapid, automatic, unconscious process by which we recognize what is represented by the information provided by our sense organs
- Accommodation
- Changes in the thickness of the lens of the eye that focus images of near or distant objects on the retina
- affix
- A sound or group of letters that is added to the beginning of a word (prefix) or to its end (suffix)
- syntactical rule
- A grammatical rule of a particular language for combining words to form phrases, clauses, and sentences
- language universal
- A characteristic feature found in all natural languages
- Linear perspective
- A monocular cue of depth perception; the arrangement of drawing of objects on a flat surface such that parallels lines receding from the viewer are seen to converge at a point on the horizon
- distinctive feature
- A physical characteristic of an object that helps distinguish it from other objects
- psycholinguistics
- A branch of psychology devoted to the study of verbal behaviour
- sclera
- The tough outer layer of the eye; the "white" of the eye
- Fundamental frequency
- The lowest, and usually most intense, frequency of a complex sound; most often perceived as the sound's basic pitch
- Sensation
- The detection of the elementary properties of a stimulus
- Motion parallax
- A cue of depth perception. As we pass by a scene, objects closer to us pass in front of objects farther away
- olfactory bulbs
- Stalk-like structures located at the base of the brain that contain neural circuits that perform the first analysis of olfactory information
- Balint's syndrome
- A syndrome caused by bilateral damage to the parietooccipital region of the brain; includes difficulty in perceiving the location of objects and reaching for them under visual guidance
- Wernicke's aphasia
- A disorder caused by damage to the left temporal and parietal cortex, including Wernicke's area; characterized by deficits in the perception of speech and by the production of fluent by rather meaningless speech
- Dark adaptation
- The process by which the eye becomes capable of distinguishing dimly illuminated objects after going from a bright area to a dark one
- ossicle
- One of the three bones of the middle ear (the hammer, anvil and stirrup) that transmit acoustical vibrations from the eardrum to the membrane behind the oval window of the cochlea
- Law of proximity
- A Gestalt law of organization; elements located closest to each other are perceived as belonging to the same figure
- Shading
- A monocular cue of depth perception; determines whether portions of the surface of an object are perceived as concave or convex
- overextension
- The use of a word to denote a larger class of items than is appropriate; for example, referring to the moon as a ball
- psychophysics
- A branch of psychology that measures the quantitative relation between physical stimuli and perceptual experience
- prosody
- The use of changes in intonation and emphasis to convey meaning in speech besides that specified by the particular words; an important means of communication of emotion
- Difference threshold
- An alternative name for just-noticeable difference (jnd)
- Hertz (Hz)
- The primary measure of the frequency of vibration of sound waves; cycles per second
- voice-onset time
- The delay between the initial sound of a consonant (such as the puffing sound of the phoneme /p/) and the onset of vibration of the vocal chords
- Threshold
- The point at which a stimulus, or a change in the value of a stimulus, can just be detected
- retinal disparity
- The fact that the points on objects located at different distances from the observer will fall on slightly different locations on the two retinas; provides the basis for stereopsis; one of the forms of depth perception
- Signal detection theory
- A mathematical theory of the detection stimuli which involves discriminating a signal from the noise in which it is embedded and which takes into account participant's willingness to report detecting the signal
- tritanopia
- A form of hereditary anomalous colour vision; caused by a lack of "blue" cones in the retina
- function word
- A preposition, article, or other word that conveys little of the meaning of a sentence but is important in specifying its grammatical structure
- conjugate movement
- The cooperative movement of the eyes, which ensures that image of an object falls on identical portions of both retinas
- form constancy
- The tendency to perceive objects as having a constant form, event when they are rotated or their distance from the observer changes
- texture
- A monocular cue of depth perception; the fineness of detail present in the surfaces of objects or in the ground or floor of a scene
- figure
- A visual stimulus that is perceived as a self-contained object