AP Psych Unit 4
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Created by:
paigepeplow on November 21, 2010
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Description:
AP Psych
Unit 4 Test
2010/2011
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71 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 sensory coding | changing important features of the world into messages understood by the brain. |
| perception | the mental process of organizing sensations into meaningful patterns. |
| absolute threshold | the minimum amount of physical energy necessary to produce a sensation... ex. tick of watch under quiet conditions, bee wing falling on cheek, drop of perfume in apartment, etc. |
| just noticeable difference (JND) | any noticeable difference in a stimulus. |
| subliminal perception | perception of a stimulus below the threshold for conscious recognition. |
| retina | the light-sensitive layer of cells at the back of the eye. |
| hyperopia | farsightedness, eye is too short, nearby objects blurry, faraway objects clear. |
| astigmatism | when eye has more than one focal point, parts of vision are blurry. |
| iris | colored circular muscle that controls the amount of light entering the eye. |
| cones | visual receptors for colors and daylight visual activity. |
| lens | focuses images on the light-sensitive layer. |
| visual acuity | the sharpness of visual perception. |
| trichromatic theory | says that there are 3 types of cones, each sensitive to either red, yellow, or blue...any other color is a combination of these 3. |
| color blindness | inability to perceive colors. |
| rhodopsin | light-sensitive pigment in the rods. |
| Organ of Corti | center part of the cochlea, containing hair cells, canals, and membranes. |
| place theory | says that higher and lower tones excite specific areas of the cochlea. |
| nerve deafness | deafness caused by damage to the hair cells or auditory nerve. |
| olfaction | smell. |
| anosmia | loss or impairment of the sense of smell. |
| taste bud | the receptor organ for taste. |
| kinesthetic sense | the senses of body movement and positioning. |
| sensory conflict theory | explains motion sickness as the result of a mismatch between information from vision, the vestibular system, and kinesthesis. |
| selective attention | voluntarily focusing on a specific sensory input. |
| phantom limb | the illusory sensation that a limb still exists after it is lost through accident or amputation. |
| engineering psychology | specialty concerned with making machines and work environments compatible with human perceptual and physical capacities. |
| depth cues | perceptual features that impart information about distance and 3D spaces...two types: monocular/binocular. |
| apparent-distance hypothesis | tries to explain moon illusion in saying that the horizon seems more distant than the night sky. |
| context | information surrounding a stimulus. |
| illusion | a misleading or distorted perception. |
| Muller-Lyer Illusion | two equal-length lines tipped with inward or outward pointing V's appear to be of different lengths. |
| selective attention | giving priority to a certain incoming sensory message. |
| habituation | a decrease in perceptual response to a repeated stimulus. |
| top-down processing | using preexisting knowledge to rapidly organize features into a meaningful whole. |
| extrasensory perception | the purported ability to perceive events in ways that cannot be explained by known capacities of the sensory organs. |
| sensation | information arriving from the sense organs creates this. |
| psychophysics | study of the relationship between physical stimuli and the sensations they evoke in a human observer... What is the |
| difference threshold | the change in stimulus intensity that is detectable to an observer. |
| Weber's Law | the amount of change needed to produce a JND is a constant proportion of the original stimulus intensity. |
| visible spectrum | the part of the electromagnetic spectrum to which the eyes are sensitive. |
| accommodation | changes in the shape of the lens of the eye. |
| myopia | nearsightedness, long eyeball, can't focus on distant objects. |
| presbyopia | farsightedness caused by aging. |
| pupil | the opening at the front of the eye through which light passes. |
| rods | visual receptors for dim light that produce only black and white sensations. |
| blind spot | an area of the retina lacking visual receptors. |
| fovea | an area at the center of the retina containing only cones. |
| opponent-process theory | says that vision analyzes colors into "either-or" messages (red/green, yellow/blue, black/white). |
| Young-Hemholtz Theory | another name for the trichromatic theory.3 |
| hair cells | receptor cells in the cochlea that transduce vibrations into nerve impulses. |
| frequency theory | says that tones up to 4000 hertz are converted to nerve impulses that match the frequency of each tone. |
| conduction deafness | poor transfer of sounds from the eardrum to the inner ear. |
| stimulation deafness | damage caused by exposing the hair cells to excessively loud sounds. |
| gustation | taste. |
| pheromone | an airborne chemical signal (seen among animals for mating, etc.). |
| somesthetic sense | sensations produced by the skin, muscles, joints, viscera, and organ of balance. |
| vestibular sense | the senses of balance, position in space, and acceleration. |
| sensory adaptation | a decrease in sensory response to an unchanging stimulus. |
| gate control theory | proposes that pain messages pass through neural "gates" in the spinal cord. |
| figure-ground organization | part of stimulus appears to stand out as an object (figure) against a less prominent background (ground). |
| depth perception | ability to see 3D space and accurately judge distances. |
| stereoscopic vision | perception of space and depth caused chiefly by the fact that the eyes receive different images...causes 3D sight. |
| perceptual learning | changes in perception that can be attributed to prior experience. |
| frame of reference | internal standards for judging stimuli. |
| stroboscopic movement | illusion of movement in which an object is shown in rapidly changing series of positions. |
| size-distance invariance | the strict relationship between the distance an object lies from the eyes and the size of its image. |
| divided attention | when you must divide your mental effort among tasks. |
| bottom-up processing | analyzing information starting with the small sensory units and building upward to a complete perception. |
| perceptual expectancy | a readiness to perceive in a particular manner, induced by strong expectations. |
| parapsychology | the study of extranormal psychological events, such as extrasensory perception. |
| perceptual defense | resistance to perceiving threatening or disturbing stimuli. |
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