Unit 4 AP Psy Hartland
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saramasters1 on May 18, 2010
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48 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 sensation | stimulation of the senses |
| perception | organizing and interpreting sensory information |
| psychophysics | study of relationships btw physical characteristics of stimuli and our experience of them |
| absolute threshold | lowest level of stimulation that a person can detect |
| difference threshold | smallest change in stimulation that a person can detect (aka just noticeable difference) |
| weber's law | the stronger the stimulus the greater the change must be in order for it to be noticed |
| signal detection theory | theory that a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and level of fatigue influnce thresholds |
| pupil | adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters |
| lens | transparent structure behind the pupil; bends and focuses light rays on the retina |
| retina | the layer of rods and cones that lines the back of the eye |
| optic nerve | carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain. |
| fovea | small depression in the retina; mostly cones; clearest vision |
| blind spot | where the optic nerve leaves the eye, no rods or cones |
| frequency | number of waves per second |
| amplitude | height of a wave |
| cones | color receptors |
| rods | receptors that detect black, white, and gray |
| hue | shade of color; determined by the wavelength of light |
| nearsightedness | image focused in front of retina; see close objects clearly; distant objects less clear |
| farsightedness | image focused behind retina; see far objects clearly; close objects less clear |
| night blindness | decreased ability to see in reduced light; impaired rod function; deficiency of vitamin A |
| colorblindness | inability to dintinguish colors; defiency or absence of cones |
| afterimage | visual image that persists after a stimulus is removed |
| binocular fusion | process of combining the images received from the two eyes into a single image |
| retinal disparity | depth cue; compare images from the two eyes; brain computes distance; greater the difference btw the two images, the closer the object |
| auditory nerve | nerve that carries impulses from the inner ear to the brain |
| pitch | highness or lowness of a tone; frequency |
| hertz | unit of frequency, pitch |
| decibels | measurement of intensity or loudness, amplitude |
| cochlea | a snail-shaped tube; inner ear; lined with receptor cells; sound |
| middle ear | chamber btw the eardrum and cochlea; hammer, anvil, and stirrup; concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the |
| inner ear | innermost part of the ear; cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs; relay sound waves to the auditory nerve fibers |
| opponent process theory | color vision is derived from three pairs of opposing receptors; blue and yellow, red and green, and black and white. |
| place theory | in hearing, pitch liked with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated |
| frequency matching theory | firing rate of a neuron matches the frequency of a sound wave to determine pitch |
| vestibular system | three semicircular canals; sense of balance, in the inner ear; connected to the brain by a nerve |
| olfactory nerve | carries impulses from olfactory receptors in the nose to the brain |
| gustation | taste |
| flavor | Experience of taste, smell, temperature,texture |
| kinesthesis | system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts |
| figure ground | organization of visual field into objects (figures) that stand out from their surroundings (ground) |
| visual cliff | laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals |
| gestalt | the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts |
| subliminal messages | brief auditory or visual messages that are presented below the absolute threshold |
| illusions | perception does not accurately represent the world |
| gustav fechner | father of psychophysics, built on the work of Weber, refined principles of perception. |
| ernst weber | pioneered study of Just Noticeable Difference, which became Weber's law. JND is proportional to size of the stimulus. |
| david hubel | w/Torsten Wiesel discovered feature detector groups of neurons;in visual cortex, respond to different types of visual images |
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