AP Psychology Ch.4 Sensation + Perception
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josephlynsuarez on April 26, 2011
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65 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 Sensation | The stimulation of sense organs. |
| Perception | The selection, organization, and interpretation of sensory input. |
| Just Noticeable Difference (JND) | The smallest difference in the amount of stimulation that a specific sense can detect. |
| Signal-detection theory | Proposes that the detection of stimuli involves decision processes as well as sensory processes, which are both influenced by a variety of factors besides stimulus intensity. |
| Threshold | A dividing point between energy levels that do and do not have a detectable effect. |
| Absolute threshold | For specific type of sensory input is the minimum amount of stimulation that an organism can detect. |
| Subliminal Perception | The registration of sensory input without conscious awareness(limen is important term for threshold, so subliminal means below threshold) |
| Sensory Adaptation | A gradual decline in sensitivity to prolonged stimulation. |
| Lens | The transparent eye structure that focuses the light rays falling on the retina. |
| Nearsightedness | Close are seen clearly but distant objects appear blurry because the focus of light from distant objects falls a little short of the retina. This focusing problem occurs when the cornea or lens bends light too much, or when the eyeball is too long. |
| Farsightedness | Distant objects are seen clearly but close objects appear blurry because the focus of light from close objects falls behind the retina. This focusing problem typically occurs when the eyeball is too short. |
| Pupil | The opening in the center of the iris that helps regulate the amount of light passing into the rear chamber of the eye. |
| Weber's Law | States that the size of a just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of the size of the initial stimulus. |
| Fechner's law | states that the magnitude of a sensory experience is proportional to the number of JND's that the stimulus causing the experience is above absolute threshold. |
| Retina | The neural tissue lining the inside back surface of the eye; it absorbs light, processes images, and sends visual information to the brain. Processes images. |
| Optic disk | A hole in the retina where the optic nerve fiberss exit the eye. It is a hole in the retina, you cannot see the part of an image that falls on it, therefore it is the blind spot. |
| Cones | specialize visual receptors that play a key role in daylight vision and color vision. |
| Rods | specialize visual receptors that lay a key role in night vision and peripheral vision. |
| Fovea | A tiny spot in the center of the retina that contains only cones; visual acuity is greatest at this spot. |
| Dark adaptation | The process in which the eyes become more sensitive to light in low illumination |
| Light adaptation | The process whereby the eyes become less sensitive to light in high illumination. |
| Receptive field (of a visual cell) | The retina area that, when stimulated, affects the firing of that cell. |
| Lateral Antagonism | occurs when neutral activity in a cell opposes activity in surrounding cells. |
| Optic Chiasm | The point at which the optic nerves from the inside half of each eye cross over and then project to the opposite half of the brain. This arrangement ensures that signals from both eyes go to both hemispheres of the brain. |
| Parallel Processing | involves simultaneously extracting different kinds of information from the same input. |
| Feature detectors | Neurons that respond selectively to very specific features of more complex stimuli. |
| Visual agnosia | An inability to recognize objects-even though their eyes function just fine. |
| Subtractive color mixing | Works by removing some wavelengths of light, leaving less light than was originally there. (yellow+blue=green) |
| Additive color mixing | Works by superimposing lights, putting more light in the mixture than exists in any one light by itself. |
| Trichromatic theory | Visual theory, stated by Young and Helmholtz that all colors can be made by mixing the three basic colors: red, green, and blue; a.k.a the Young-Helmholtz theory. |
| Color blindness | encompasses a variety of deficiencies in the ability to distinguish among colors. |
| Complementary colors | Pairs of colors that produce gray tones when mixed together. |
| After-Image | A visual image that persists after a stimulus is removed |
| Opponent process theory of color vision | Holds that color perception depends on receptors that make antagonistic responses to three pairs of colors |
| Reversibility figure | A drawing that is compatible with two interpretations that can shift back and forth. |
| Perceptual set | A readiness to perceive a stimulus in a particular way. |
| Feature Analysis | The process of detecting specific elements in visual input and assembling them into a more complex form. |
| Bottom-up processing | A progression from individual elements to the whole. |
| Top-down processing | A progression from the whole to the elements. |
| Subjective contours | The perception of contours where none actually exist. |
| Phi Phenomenon | The illusion of movement created by presenting visual stimuli in rapid succession. |
| Distal stimuli | Stimuli that lie in the distance (that is, in the world outside the body) |
| Proximal stimuli | Stimuli energies that impinge directly on sensory receptors |
| Perceptual hypothesis | An inference about which distal stimuli could be responsible for the proximal stimuli sensed. |
| Depth perception | involves interpretation of visual cues that indicate how near or far way objects are. |
| Binocular depth cues | clues about distance based on the differing views of the two eyes. |
| Retinal disparity | Refers to the fact that objects within 25 ft project images to slightly different locations on the right and left retinas, so the right and left eyes see slightly different views of the object. |
| Convergence | involves sensing the eyes converging toward each other as they focus on close objects. |
| Monocular depth cues | clues about distance based on the image in either eye alone. |
| Motion parallax | involves images of objects at different distances moving across the retina at different rates. |
| Pictorial depth cues | clues about the distance that can be given in a flat picture. |
| Perceptual constancy | A tendency to experience a stable perception in the face of continually changing sensory input. |
| Optical illusion | Involves an apparently inexplicable discrepancy between the appearance of a visual stimulus and its physical reality. |
| Impossible figures | objects that can be represented in two-dimensional pictures but cannot exist in three-dimensional space. |
| Cochlea | A filled, coiled tunnel that contains the receptors for hearing. |
| Basilar membrane | Which runs the length of the spiraled cochlea, holds the authority receptors. |
| Place theory | holds that perception of pitch corresponds to the vibration of different portions, or places, along the basilar membrane. |
| Frequency theory | holds that perception of pitch corresponds to the rate, or frequency, at which the entire basilar membrane vibrates. |
| Volley principle | holds that groups of auditory nerve fibers fire neural impulses in rapid succession, creating volleys of impulses. |
| Auditory localization | locating the source of a sound in space.. |
| Gustatory system | The sensory system for taste. |
| Olfactory system | The sensory system for smell. |
| Gate-control theory | holds that incoming pain sensations must pass through a "gate" in the spinal cord that can be closed, thus blocking ascending pain signals. |
| Kinesthetic system | Monitors the positions of the various parts of the body. |
| Psychophysics | The study of how physical stimuli are translated into psychological experience. (Gustav Fechner-contributor) |
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