AP Psych (ch.4 sensation & perception)
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Created by:
SamanthaReedy on October 26, 2011
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79 terms
Terms | Definitions |
|---|---|
 prosopagnosia | The perceptual disorder in which a person has lost the ability to recognize familiar faces |
| sensation | the process by which we detect physical energy from the environment and encode it as neural signals |
| perception | the process by which sensations are organized and interpreted |
| bottom-up processing | sensory analysis which starts at the entry level and works up |
| top-down processing | perceptual analysis which works from our experience and expectations |
| psycophysics | the study of the relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them |
| absolute threshold | minimum stimulation necessary for a stimulus to be detected 50% of the time |
| signal detection theory | a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and fatigue all influence the detection of a stimulus |
| subliminal stimuli | "below threshold" |
| difference threshold | (just noticeable difference) minimum difference required to distinguish two stimuli 50% of the time |
| Weber's Law | the difference threshold is not a constant amount, but a constant proportion which depends on the stimuli |
| sensory adaptation | after constant exposure to an unchanging stimulus, the receptor cells of our sense begin to fire less vigorously |
| wavelength | distance from one light wave peak to the next |
| hue | value determines wave's color or... |
| intensity | the amount of energy in light waves |
| amplitude | height of wave |
| brightness | influenced by wave's amplitude |
| track of light through the eye | cornea, pupil, iris, lens, retina |
| retina | light sensitive inner surface of the eye |
| accommmadation | the process by which the lens changes shape to focus images |
| cones and rods | retina's receptor cells |
| track of neural signals in the eye | rods and cones, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, optic nerve |
| blind spot | area where there are no receptors |
| fovea | retina's point of central focus |
| rods concentrated... | peripheral regions of retina. enables black and white vision. sensitive in dim light, adaptation take about 20 mins |
| cones concentrated... | central retina. have their own bipolar cells to communicate with the visual cortex. permit perception of color |
| appearance of color | a red object reflects long wavelengths of red, combined with our mental construction of the color |
| Young-Helmholz/Trichromatic Theory | eyes have three types of color receptors; red green and blue |
| Opponent-Process Theory | after visual information leaves the receptors it is analyzed in pairs of opposing colors: red/green, yellow/blue, black/white |
| stimulus for hearing | air molecules |
| amplitude | determines loudness |
| frequency | determines pitch |
| sections of the ear | inner, middle, outer |
| outer ear | channels sound waves toward the eardrum |
| middle ear | transmits vibrations from eardrum through piston: (hammer, anvil, stirrup) |
| inner ear | contains cochlea (receptor cells) |
| process in inner ear | incoming vibrations vibrate fluid in the oval window/cochlea membrane, causing ripples in the basilar membrane, bending hair cells that line surface, triggers impulses in auditory nerve, neural message carried to temporal lope's auditory cortex |
| place theory | different pitches activate different places in the cochlea's membrane. difficulty accounting for how we hear low pitched sounds |
| frequency theory | neural impulses sent to the brain at same frequency as sound waves allow different pitches. fails to account for high pitched sounds (individual neurons cannot fire faster than 1000 times/sec |
| volley principle | for higher pitches, cells may alternate their firing to match the sound's frequency |
| locating sounds | by differences in intensity and speed with which it reaches our ears |
| conduction hearing loss | problems in the mechanical conduction of sound waves through the outer or middle ear |
| sensorineural hearing loss | damage to the cochlea's hair cells or their associated auditory nerves . (hereditary, aging, prolonged exposure to loud noises) |
| 4 senses of touch | pressure, warmth, cold, pain |
| kinesthesis | system for sensing the position and movement of body parts |
| kinesthesis receptors located | tendons joints bones |
| vestibular sense | monitors head movements |
| pain | property of our physiology as well as our experience, attention and culture |
| gate-control theory | (melzack and wall) proposes there is a neurological "gate" in the spinal cord that blocks pain signals or lets them through. it is open by activation of small nerve fibers and closed by activation of large fibers or by info from brain |
| 5 senses of taste | sweet sour salty bitter umami |
| taste | chemical sense, enabled by 200+ taste buds each with a pore that catches food chemicals |
| synaesthesia | senses become joined |
| taste/smell/olfaction | chemical senses, NO distinct receptor for each detectable odor |
| odors | able to evoke memories/feelings bc there is a direct link brain and the ancient limbic centers |
| Gestalt School of Psychology | we tend to organize clusters of sensation into a whole/form |
| continuity | organization of stimuli into smooth continuous patterns |
| closure | principle that we fill in gaps to create a complete object |
| proximity | grouping of items that are close to each other |
| similarity | grouping of items that look alike |
| connectedness | tendency to perceive uniform or attached items as a single unit |
| depth perception | ability to see objects in 3D despite 2D representation on our retina. enables us to estimate distance |
| binocular cues | any cue that requires both eyes |
| monocular cues | any cue that requires either eye alone |
| retinal disparity | the greater the difference btw the images received by the two eyes, the nearer the object. (stimulated by 3D movies) |
| relative size | two objects are presumed to be the same size, the one that cast a smaller retinal image is perceived as further away |
| interposition | an object partially covered by another is seen as further away |
| relative height | objects lower in the visual field are seen as nearer |
| relative motion | as we move, objects at different distances appear to move at different rates |
| linear perspective | parallel lines appear to converge in the distance |
| light and shadow | the dimmer of the two objects seems farther away |
| perceptual constancy | our tendency to see objects as unchanging while the stimuli from them change in size, shape, and lightness |
| brain computes brightness... | relative to surrounding objects |
| relative luminance | the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings |
| color constancy | the experience of color depends on the surrounding context in which an object is seen. in an unvarying context a familiar object will be perceived as having consistent color, even as the light changes |
| perceptual set | a mental predisposition that greatly influences what we perceive (top-down) |
| telepathy | capable of reading others minds |
| clairvoyance | a person who can sense that a friend is in danger |
| precognition | ability to see the future |
| psychokinesis | able to levitate and move objects |
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