AP Psychology (Barron's)-Chapter 4
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beccahoyt20 on April 23, 2012
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Sensation and Perception
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84 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 transduction | signals from stimuli received by sensory organs are transformed into neural impulses, which travel 1st to the thalamus then to diff. cortices of the brain |
| adaptation | a process that results in decreasing responsiveness to a stimuli; caused by constant stimulation of a sense |
| cocktail party phenomenon | paying attention can be involuntary: ex- talking to a friend, another person calls your name, you turn your attention to the other person |
| sensation | activation of our senses |
| perception | process of understanding sensations |
| vision | most dominant sense in humans. use vision to gather infor about their env. more than any other sense; 4 steps: gathering light, within the eye, transduction, in the brain |
| cornea | where reflected light 1st enters; a protective covering; helps focus the light |
| pupil | passes through after the cornea; like the shutter of a camera; the IRIS opens it (dilates) to let more light in & also make it smaller to let less light in (think when you open your eyes and look at them immediately in a mirror-the pupils increase) |
| iris | muscles that control the pupil |
| lens | focuses the light that enters the pupil; curved & flexible in order to focus the light |
| retina | like a screen on the back of the eye; where the focused inverted image projects; has specialized neruons that are activated by the different wavelengths of light |
| cones | part the 1st layer of cells in the retina; directly activated by light & color; outnumbered by rods; concentrated toward center of retina |
| rods | part of the 1st layer of cells in the retina; respond to black & white; outnumber cones; distributed throughout the retina |
| fovea | very center of retina; indentation that has the highest concentration of cones |
| bipolar cells | second layer of neurons in the retina that transmit impulses from rods and cones to ganglion cells |
| ganglion cells | activated by bipolar cells; axons of these cells make up the OPTIC NERVE that sends these impulses to a specific region in the thalamus called the LATERAL GENICULATE NUCLEUS (LGN) |
| optic nerve | the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain |
| blind spot | spot where the optic nerve leaves the retina & has no rods or cones |
| optic chiasm | spot where the nerves cross each other; the crossing of the optic nerves from the two eyes at the base of the brain |
| feature detectors | activated by impulses that are received in the visual cortex from cells of the retina |
| Hubel & Weisel | perception researchers; discovered that groups of neurons in the visual cortex respond to different types of visual images; visual cortex has feature detectors for vertical lines, curves, motion, etc. |
| trichromatric theory | we have 3 types of cones in the retina: cones that detect the different colors blue, red, & green; these cones are activated in diff. combos to produce all the colors of teh visible spectrum; doesn't explain AFTERIMAGES or COLOR BLINDNESS |
| afterimages | staring at one color for a while, then look @ white/blank space, you see the color afterimage; stare at green, afterimage = red; stare at yellow, afterimage = blue |
| color blindness | dichromatric color blindness-can't see either red/green shades or blue/yellow shades; monochromatic-can only see shades of gray |
| opponent-process theory | sensory recptors arranged in the retina come in pairs: red/green pairs, yellow/blue paris, black/white pairs; if 1 sensor is stimulated, its pair is inhibited from firing; explains afterimages - if you stare @ red for a while, sensors for red are fatigued, so you'll see the pair of it, which is green; explains color blindness - if color sensors come in pairs & a person is missing 1 pair, he/she should have difficulty seeing those hues |
| sound waves | vibrations in the air; created by vibrations which travel thru air & then are collected by our ears; vibrations go thru transduction into neural messages & are sent to the brain; have AMPLITUDE & FREQUENCY |
| amplitude | height of the wave, determines loudness of sound (measured in decibels) |
| frequency | length of the waves & determines pitch, measured in meghertz; high pitched sounds have high frequencies & waves are densely packed; low pitched sounds-low frequency-spaced apart waves |
| ear canal/auditory canal | sound waves travel down here until they reach the EARDRUM |
| eardrum/tympanic membrane | a thin membrane that vibrates ast he sound waves hit it; think of it as the head of a drum; attached to the 1st in a series of 3 small bones: HAMMER, ANVIL, STIRRUP |
| hammer/malleus | connected to the EARDRUM & ANVIL; 1 of 3 bones in a series |
| anvil/incus | connected to the HAMMER & the STIRRUP; 1 of 3 bones in a series |
| stirrup/staps | connected to ANVIL; 1 of 3 bones in a series |
| oval window | vibration of the eardrum is transmitted by the 3 bones to this; it's a membrane very similar to the eardrum; attached to the COCHLEA |
| cochlea | a structure shaped like a snails shell filled w/ fluid; fluid moves as OVAL WINDOW vibrates; floor (lower membrane ) of it is lined w/ hair cells connected to the ORGAN OF CORTI |
| organ of Corti | organ located in the cochlea; contains receptors (hair cells) that receive vibrations and generate nerve impulses for hearing |
| place theory | in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated |
| frequency theory | in hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch |
| conduction deafness | hearing loss due to problems with the bones of the middle ear |
| nerve/sensorineural deafness | Hearing loss created by damage to the hair cells or the auditory nerve fibers in the inner ear. |
| gate control theory | The theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. |
| chemical senses | taste & smell |
| papillae | small rough elevations on tongue and roof of mouth; contain taste buds |
| olfactory bulb | the first brain structure to pick up smell information from the nose |
| olfactory receptor cells | receptor cells at top of nasal cavity (pick up smell) |
| vestibular sense | the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance. This also lets you know if your body is in a horizontal or vertical positon |
| semicircular canals | the structures in the ear that are responsible for your sense of balance |
| kinesthetic sense | system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts |
| psychophysics | study of interaction b/w sensations we receive & our experience of them |
| absolute threshold | the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time |
| subliminal | below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness |
| difference threshold/just noticeable difference | the smallest change in stimulation that a person can detect |
| Weber's law | states that the difference threshold, or jnd, is directly proportional to the magnitude of the stimulus with which the comparison is being made |
| signal detection theory | investigates the effects of the distractions & interference we expereince while pereceiving the world; tries to predict what we will perceive among competing stimuli; takes into account how motivated we are to detect certain stimuli & what we expect to perceive |
| response criteria/receiver operating characteristics | how motivated we are to detect certain stimuli and what we expect to perceive |
| false positive | when we think we perceive a stimulus that is not there |
| false negative | not perceiving a stimulus that is present |
| top-down processing | we perceive by filling in gaps in what we sense;you use your background knowledge to fill in gaps in what you perceive |
| schemata | mental representations of how we expect the world to be; influences how we perceive the world |
| perceptual set | a predisposition to perceiving something in a certain way |
| backmasking | supposed hidden messages musicians recorded backward in their music |
| bottom up processing/feature analysis | we use only the features of the object itself to perceive it |
| figure-ground relationship | what part of a visual image is the figure & what part is the ground or background? think optical illusion w/ faces & vase |
| gestalt rules | we normally perceive images as groups, not as isolated elements; 4 factors that influence: proximity, similarity, continuity, closure |
| proximity | objects that are close together are more likely to be perceived as belonging to the same group |
| similarity | objects that are similar in apperance are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group |
| continuity | objects that form a continuous form (such as a trail or a geometric figure) are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group |
| closure | similar to top-down processing; objects that make up a recognizable image are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group even if the image contains gaps that the mind needs to fill in |
| constancy | our ability to maintain a constant perception of an object despite changes in it from moment to moment due to light, our position, etc; 3 types: size, shape, brightness |
| size constancy | objects closer to our eyes will produce bigger images on our retinas, but we take distance into account in our estimations of size; we keep a constant size in mind for an object and know that it does not grow or shrink as it moves closer or further away |
| shape constancy | objects viewed from different angles will produce diff. shapes on our retinas, but we know the shape of an object remains constant |
| brigtness constancy | we perceive objects as being a constant color even as the light reflecting off the object changes |
| depth cues | Perceptual features that impart information about distance and three-dimentional space |
| Eleanor J. Gibson | VISUAL CLIFF EXPERIMENT: used to determine whether infants could perceive depth; infant placed on glass table to create appearance of a cliff, found that infant won't crawl across-it has depth perception |
| monocular cues | depth cues that do not depend on having 2 eyes |
| linear perspective | 1 of the most common monocular cues; for perceiving depth; the more parallel lines converge, the greater their perceived distance |
| relative size cue | you would draw boxcars closer to the viewer as larger than the engine off in the distance |
| interposition cue | objects that block the view to other objects must be closer to us |
| texture gradient | we know that we can see details in texture close to us but not far away |
| shadowing | by shading part of your picture, you can imply where the light source is & thus imiply depth & position of objects |
| bionocular cues | cues that depend on having 2 eyes; result from our anatomy-we see the world w/ 2 eyes set a certain distance apart, & this feaure of our anatomy gives us the ability to perceive depth |
| bionocular disparity/retinal disparity | each of our eeys sees any object from a slightly different angle, & the brain gets both images |
| convergence | as an object gets closer to your face, our eyes must move toward 1 another to keep focused on the object |
| Muller-Lyer illusion | 2 lines w/ arrows on end, 1 set facing in & one facing out - which line is longer? they're the same in length. |
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