Chapter Three psych terms
Terms
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- Sensation
- The processes by which our sense organs receive information from the environment
- Transduction
- The process by which physical energy is converted into sensory neural impulses
- Perception
- The processes by which people select, organize, and interpret sensations
- Psychophysics
- The study of the relationship between physical stimulation and subjective sensations
- Absolute threshold
- The smallest amout of stimulation that can be detected
- Signal-Detection Theory
- The theory that detecting a stimulus is jointly determined by the signal and the subject's response criterion
- Just Noticable Difference (JND)
- The smallest amount of change in a stimulus that can be detected
- Weber's law
- The principle that the JND of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity
- Color
- determined by the length of a lightwave. Short waves are blueish, long waves are red
- Intensity/brightness
- Amplitute or height of a lightwave causes this
- Purity/ Saturation
- A measure of the numbers of wavelengths that make up light. The fewer the wavelengths, the richer the color.
- Cornea
- The clear outer membrane that bends light so that it is sharply focused in the eye
- Iris
- The ring of muscle tissue that gives eyes their color and controls the size of the pupil
- Pupil
- The small round hole in the iris of the eye through which light passes
- Lens
- A transparent structure in the eye that focuses light on the retina.
- Accomodation
- The visual process by which lenses become rounded for viewing nearby objects and flatter for viewing remote objects.
- Retina
- The rear, multilayered part of the eye where rods and cones convert light into neural impulses
- Rods
- Rod-shaped photoreceptor cells in the retina that are highly sensitive to light
- Cones
- Cone-shapped photoreceptor cells in the retina that are sensitive to color
- Fovea
- The center of the retina, where cones are clustered
- Dark adaptation
- A process of adjustment by which the eyes become more sensitive to light in a dark environment
- Light adaptation
- The process of adjustment by which the eyes become less sensitive to light in a bright environment
- Optic Nerve
- The pathway that carries visual information from the eyeball to the brain
- Blind Spot
- A part of the retina through which the optic nerve passes. Lacking rods and cones, this spot is not responsive to light
- Receptive field
- An area of the retina in which stimulation triggers a response in a cell within the visual system
- Visual Cortex
- Located in the back of the brain, it is the main information-processing center for visual information
- Feature Detectors
- Neurons in the visual cortex that respond to specific aspects of a visual stimulus (such as lines or angles)
- Simple Cells
- Feature detector cells that are activated by highly particular images.
- Complex Cells
- Feature detector cells that receive input from many simple cells. They specialize in certain types of images. React to any where in the visual field
- Hypercomplex Cells
- Feature detector cells that recieve input from complex cells and respond to stimulus patterns. the letter A
- Trichromatic Theory
- A theory of color vision stating that the retina contains three types of color receptors, for red, blue, and green, and that these combine to produce all colors.
- Afterimage
- A visual sensation that persists after prolonged exposure to and removal of a stimulus.
- Opponent-process theory
- The theory that color vision is derived from three pairs of opposing receptors. The opponent colors are blue and yellow, red and green, and black and white.
- Audition
- The sense of hearing
- White noise
- A hissing sound that results from a combination of all frequencies of the sound spectrum
- Outer ear
- The fleshy pinna, the auditory canal, and the eardrum
- Middle ear
- The hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup
- Inner Ear
- Oval window, cochlea, basilar membrane, auditory nerve
- Auditory localization
- The ability to judge the direction a sound is coming from.
- Conduction Hearing loss
- Hearing loss caused by damage to the eardrum or bones in the middle ear
- Sensoineural hearing loss
- Hearing loss caused by damage to the structures of the inner ear
- Olfactory System
- The structures responsible for the sense of smell
- Pheromones
- Chemicals secreted by animals that transmit signals-usually to other animals of the same species
- Gustatory system
- The structures responsible for the sense of taste
- Taste buds
- Nets of taste-receptor cells
- Gate-Control Theory
- The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals from the brain when flooded by competing signals.
- Kinesthetic System
- Teh structures distributed throughout the body that give us a sense of position and movement of body parts
- Vestibular System
- The inner ear and brain structures that give us a sense of equilibrium
- Synesthesia
- A rare condition in which stimulation in one sensory modality triggers sensations in another sensory modality.
- Reversable Figure
- A drawing that one can percieve in different ways by reversing figure and ground
- Gestalt Psychology
- A school of thought rooted in the idea that the whole (perception) is different from the sum of its parts (sensation)
- Proximity
- The closer objects are, the more likely they are to be grouped together
- Similarity
- Objects that are similare in size, shape, color or any other fearture are more likely to be grouped together
- Continuity
- People percieve contours of straight and curved lines as continuous flowing patterns
- Closure
- When there are gaps in a figure in a familiar form, people mentally close the gaps and perceive as a whole.
- Common Fate
- Groups of objects that move together, like schools of fish fall into this Gestalt Law of Grouping
- Size Consistancy
- The tendency to view an object as constant in size despite changes in the size of the retinal image
- Shape Consistancy
- The tendency to see an object as retaining its form despite changes in orientation
- Depth Perception
- The use of visual cues to estimate the depth and distance of objects
- Convergence
- A binocular cue for depth perception involving the turning inward of the eyes as an object gets closer
- Binocular Disparity
- A binocular cue for depth perception whereby the closer an object is to a perceiver, the more different the image is in each retina
- Monocular Depth cues
- Distance cues, such as linear perspective, that enable us to percieve depth with one eye EX: Relative image size, texture gradient, linear perspective, interposition, atmospheric perspective, relative elevation, familiarity.
- Visual cliff
- An apparatus used to test depth perception in infants and animals
- Perceptual set
- The effects of prior experience and expectations on interpretations of sensory input.
- Perceptual illusions
- Patterns of sensory input that give rise to misperceptions
- Muller-Lyer illusion
- An illusion in which the pervcieved length of a line is altered by the position of other lines taht enclose it
- Ponzo illusion
- An illustration in which the perceived length of a line is affected by linear perspective cues
- Moon illusions
- The tendency for people to see the moon as larger when it's low on the horizon than when it is overhead
- Extrasensory perception (ESP)
- The alleged ability to percieve something without ordinary sensory information
- Parapsychology
- The study of ESP and other claims that cannot be explained by existing principles of science