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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

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