AP Psych Unit 1 Part 2: Sensation & Perception

Sensation

Sensory receptors

Perception

the process by which our brain organizes and interprets sensory information, enabling us to recognize objects and events as meaningful.

Bottom-up processing

information processing that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.

Top down processing

Transduction

Psychophysics

the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.

Gustav Fechner

Absolute threshold

the minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.

Signal detection theory

Subliminal

Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response.

Difference threshold

the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (or jnd).

Ernst Weber

Weber’s Law

Sensory adaptation

Wave length

Hue

Intensity

Cornea

the eye’s clear, protective outer layer, covering the pupil and iris.

Pupil

Iris

Lens

Retina

Accommodation

(1) in sensation and perception, the process by which the eye’s lens changes shape to focus images of near or far objects on the retina.

Rods

Cones

Optic nerve

Blind spot

the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a “blind” spot because no receptor cells are located there.

Fovea

Young-Helmholt Tricomatic theory

Opponent-process theory

the theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, blue-yellow, white-black) enable color vision. For example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red; others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green.

Duvid Hubel

Torsten Wiesel

Feature detectors

Parallel processing

processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously.

Audition

Selective attention

Inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Change blindness

Perceptual set

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another.

Gestalt

an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Figure ground

Frequency

Pitch

Middle ear

Cochlea

a coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses.

Inner ear

the innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.

Sensorineural hearing loss

Conduction hearing loss

Cochlear implant

a device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea.

Grouping

Depth perception

the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance.

Visual cliff

Binocular cues

a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes.

Convergence

Retinal disparity

Monocular cue

Place theory

in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated. (Also called place coding.)

Frequency theory

Gate control theory

the theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The “gate” is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain.

Gustation

our sense of taste.

Olfaction

our sense of smell

Kinesthesis

Vestibular sense

Sensory interaction embodied cognition

Stroboscopic movement

Phi phenomenon

an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession.

Autokinetic effect

Perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent color, brightness, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Color constancy

Perceptual adaptation

the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.