Psychology Ch.3.1 Vocab
Terms
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- The process of detecting a physical stimulus, such as light, soud, heat, or pressure.
- sensation
- The process of integrating, organizing, and interpreting sensations.
- perception
- Specialized cells unique to each sense organ that respond to a particular form of sensory stimulation.
- Sensory receptors
- The process by which a form of physical energy is converted into a conded neural signal that can be processed by the nervous system.
- transduction
- The smallest possible strength of a stimulus that can be detected in half the time.
- absolute threshold
- The smallest possible difference between two stimuli that can be detected in half the time
-
difference threshold
also called
just noticable difference - A principle of sensation that holds that the size of the just noticable difference will vary depending on its relation to the strength of the original stimulus.
- Weber's law
- The perception of stimuli that are below the threshold of conscious awareness.
- subliminal perception
- The decline in sensitivity to a constant stimulus.
- sensory adaptation
- The distance from one wave peak to another.
- wavelength
- A clear membrane covering the visible part of the eye that helps gather and direct incoming light.
- cornea
- The opening in the middle of the iris that changes size to let in different amounts of light.
- pupil
- The colored part of the eye, which is the muscle that controls the size of the pupil.
- iris
- A transparent structure located behind the pupil that actively focuses, or bends, light as it enters the eye.
- lens
- The process by which the lens changes chape to focus incoming light so that it falls on the retina.
- accomodation
- A thin, light-sensitive membrane located at the back of the eye that contains the sensory receptors for vision.
- retina
- The long, thin, blunt sensory receptors of the eye that are sensitive to light, but not to color, and that are primarily responsible for peripheral vision and night vision.
- rods
- The short, thick pointed sensory receptors of the eye that detect color and are responsiblefor color vision and visual acuity.
- cones
- A small area at the center of the retina, composed entirely of cones, where visual information is most sharply focused.
- fovea
- Area of the retina without rods or cones, where the optic nerve exits the back of the eye.
- optic disk
- The point and which the optic nerve leaves the eye, producing a small gap in the field of vision.
- blind spot
- In the retina, the specialized neurons that connect to the bipolar cells; the bundled axons of the ganglion cells from the optic nerve.
- ganglion cells
- In the retina, the specialized neurons that connect the rods and cones with the ganglion cells.
- bipolar cells
- The thick nerve that extis from the back of the eyeand carries visual informaion to the visual cortex of the brain.
- optic nerve
- Point in the brain where the optic nerve fibers from each eye meet and partly cross over to the opposite side of the brain.
- optic chiasm
- The perceptual experience of different wavelengths of light, involving hue, saturation (purity), and brightness (intensity).
- color
- The property of wavelengths of light known as color; different wavelengths correspond to our subjective experience of different colors.
- hue
- The property of color that corresponds to the purity of the light wave.
- saturation
- The percieved intensity of a color, which corresponds to the amplitude of the light wave.
- brightness
- The theory that the sensation of color results because cones in the retina are especially sensitive to red light (long wavelenghts), green light (medium wavelenghts), or blue light (short wavelengths).
- trichromatic theory of color vision
- One of several inherited forms of color deficiency or weakness in which an individual cannot distinguish between certain colors.
- color blindness
- A visual experience that occurs after the original source of stimulation is no longer present.
- afterimage
- The theory that color vision is the product of opposing pairs of color receptors, red-green, blue-yellow, and black-white; when one member of a color pair is stimulated, the other member is inhibited.
- opponent-process theory of color vision