Psychology Vcabulary Chapter 4
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44 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Absolute threshold | the level of sensory stimulation necessary for a sensation to occur |
| Adaptation | the gradual loss of attention to unneeded or unwanted sensory information |
| Sensation | the process of receiving information from the environment |
| Perception | the process of assembling and organizing sensory information to make it meaningful |
| White light | light as it originates form the sun or a bulb before it is broken into different frequencies |
| Cornea | the clear outer covering of the eye, behind which is fluid |
| Iris | a colored circular muscle that opens and closes, forming larger and smaller circles to control the amount of light getting into the eye |
| Lens | the part of the eye that focuses an image on the retina |
| Retina | the back of the eye, which contains millions of receptors for light |
| Blind spot | point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a "blind spot" because there are no receptor cells located there |
| Rod | a visual receptor most sensitive to the violet-purple wave lengths; very sensitive for night vision; "sees" only black and white |
| Cone | a visual receptor that responds during daylight; "sees" color |
| Color blindness | inability to perceive certain colors, such as red and green |
| Afterimage | image that remains after stimulation of the retina has ended. Cones not used fire to bring the visual system back in balance |
| Audition | the sense of hearing |
| Pitch | how high or low a sound is |
| Timbre | the complexity of a sound |
| Intensity | how loud a sound is |
| Decibels | a measyre of how loud a sound is (its intensity) |
| Eardrum | a piece of skin stretched over the entrance to the ear; vibrates to sound |
| Cochlea | a snail-shaped part of the ear filled with fluid and small hairs that vibrate to incoming sound |
| Hair cells | receptor cells for hearing found in the cochlea |
| Cilia | hairlike extensions on cells |
| Auditory nerve | bundle of nerves carrying sounds to the brain |
| Cutaneous receptors | nerve recetors in the skin that respond to pressure, temperature, or pain |
| Olfaction | the sense of smell |
| Olfactory bulbs | units that receive odor molecules and communicate their nature to the brain |
| Pheromones | odor chemicals that communicate a message |
| Taste receptors | chemical receptors on the tongue that decode molecules of food or drunk to identify them |
| Brightness constancy | the ability to keep an object's brightness constant as the object is moved to various environments |
| Shape constancy | the ability to perceive an object as ahving the same shape regardless of the angle at which it is seen |
| Space constancy | the ability to keep objects in the environment steady by perceiving either ourselves or outside objects as moving |
| Depth perception | the ability to see the relation of objects in space |
| Visual cliff | an apparatus used to demonstare depth perception |
| Retinal disparity | the difference between the images provided by the two retinas. When the images are brought together in the brain, they provide a sense of depth |
| Texture gradient | how rough or how smooth objects appear; used un depth preception |
| Gestalt | an organized whole shape or form |
| Similarity | a perceptual cue that involves grouping like things together |
| Proximity | a perceptual cue that involves grouping together things that are near one another |
| Closure | the process of filling in the missing details of what is viewed |
| Illusions | inaccurate perceptions |
| Muller-Lyer illusion | illusion in which one line in a picture with two equal length lines seems longer |
| Reversible figure | illusion in which the same object is seen as two alternating figures- first one, then the other |
| Pupil | the opening in the eye |
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