Psych Test Brain and Perception Matching - Vision, Hearing, Senses, Perception

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Transduction

When signals picked up by sensory organs are transformed into neural impulses.

Sensory Adaptation

Decreasing responsiveness to stimuli due to constant stimulation.

Sensory Habituation

Decreased responsiveness to stimuli due to our level of focus on the perception of sensation.

Cornea

A protective covering for the eye where light first enters.

Pupil

Section of the eye often related to as a “shutter on a camera”

Accommodation

A process in which light that enters the pupil of the eye is focused by the lens. (Not to be confused with Piaget’s definition)

Lens

A curved and flexible part of the eye that allows the eye to focus light entering.

Retina

A section in the back of the eye where are specialized neurons are activated by different wavelengths of light; sometimes described as “a screen” on the back of the eye.

Cones

Special cells within the eye that are directly activated by color.

Rods

Special cells within the eye that respond to black and white.

Fovea

A special indentation in the very center of the retina that contains the highest concentration of cones. 

Cocktail Party Phenomena

An involuntary shift in focus of from one stimuli to another, such as when someone says your name from across the room and you focus on them as opposed to the person you are talking to. 

Ganglion Cells

The axons of these special cells make up the optic nerve that sends these impulses to the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN); only activates if enough bipolar cells fire previously.

Blind Spot

The spot where the optic nerve leaves the retina which has no rods or cones.

Optic Chiasm

The spot where the optic nerves cross each other as the impulses from the left side of each retina goes to the left hemisphere of the brain and the impulses from the right side of each retina goes to the right hemisphere of the brain.

Trichromatic Theory

This theory hypothesizes that we have three types of cones in the retina which detect blue, red, and green and they activate in different combinations to produce all the colors of the visible  spectrum. 

Afterimages

Phenomena that occurs when you stare at one color for a while and then look at a white or blank and see a color where there should not be one.

Opponent-Process Theory

This theory states the sensory receptors arranged in the retina come in pairs, and if one sensor is stimulated its pair is inhibited from firing (pair examples include red/green and black/white)

Amplitude

The height of the wave and determines the loudness of the sound, which is measured in decibels.

Frequency

The length of the waves and determines pitch, measured in megahertz.

Auditory Canal

Also referred to as the ear canal, it carries sounds inside the ear to tympanic membrane.

Pinna

The outer ear where sound waves are first collected.

Tympanic Membrane

Thin membrane inside the ear that vibrates when sound hits it. 

Malleus

One of the parts of the inner ear (some say shaped like a hammer) and connected to the anvil which vibrates due to sound.

Incus (Anvil)

One of the parts of the inner ear connected to the stirrup that vibrates due to sound.

Cochlea

A structure shaped like a snail’s shell that is filled with fluid that reacts to vibrations from the oval window

Organ of Corti

Neurons activated by the movement of hair cells which line the basilar membrane.

Place Theory

Theory holds that the hair cells in the cochlea respond to different frequencies of sound based on where they are located in the cochlea.

Frequency Theory

Theory that holds that lower tones are sensed by the rate at which the hair cells in the cochlea fire (we sense pitch because the hair cells fire at different rates (frequencies).

Conduction Deafness

Occurs when something goes wrong with the system of conducting sound to the cochlea. 

Sensorineural Deafness

Occurs when the hair cells in the cochlea are damaged, usually by loud noise.

Gate-Control Theory

Helps explain how we experience pain by stating that some pain messages have a higher priority than others.

Papillae

 Bumps you can see on your tongue which contain the taste buds.

Olfactory Bulb

Gathers the messages of the olfactory receptor cells and sends this information to the brain.

Olfactory Receptor Cells

Effectively the cells that allow for roughly 100 types of smells to be detected; located inside each nostril.

Vestibular Sense

Tells us about how our body is oriented in space; connected with three semicircular canals inside the inner ear; often connected with feelings of nausea and dizziness for some.

Kinesthetic Sense

Gives us feedback about the position and orientation of specific body parts, such as our limbs.

Absolute Threshold

Smallest amount of stimulus we can detect.

Subliminal (Threshold)

Stimuli below our ability to detect.

Difference Threshold

The smallest amount of change needed in a stimulus before we can detect change. (Just noticeable difference)

Weber’s Law

States that the change needed to detect a change in stimuli is proportional to the original intensity of the stimulus; the more intense the stimulus, the more it will need to change before we notice.

Signal Detection Theory

Investigates the effects of the distractions and interference we experience while perceiving the world.

False Positive

When we think we perceive a stimulus that is not there.

False Negative

Not perceiving a stimulus that is present.

Top-Down Processing

The moment in perception in which we fill in gaps in what we sense (Ex: HO_E)

Backmasking

Supposed hidden messages musicians recorded backward in their music. 

Proximity

Objects that are close together are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group.

Figure-Ground Relationship

The type of perceptual decision where we decide which part of a visual image is the most prominent; often used in optical illusions.

Bottom-Up Processing

Instead of using our experience to perceive an object, we use only the features of the object itself to build a complete perception.

Similarity

Objects that are similar in appearance are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group.

Continuity

Objects that form a continuous form are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group.

Closure

Similar to top-down processing.  Objects that make up a recognizable image are more likely to be perceived as belonging in the same group even if the image contains gaps that the mind needs to fill in.

Constancy

Our ability to maintain constant perception of an object despite changes in angle of vision, variation in light, and so on.

Phi Phenomena

An effect that results in the perception of motion when no motion is actually occurring; an example would be a series of lights being turned on and off in a sequence.

Autokinetic Effect

An effect that results in a group of people reporting the movement of a steady, non-moving light being shown in a dark room when no movement is actually occurring.

Visual Cliff Experiment

An experiment created by Eleanor Gibson to determine when human infants can perceive depth. 

Monocular Cues

Depth cues that do not depend on having two eyes

Binocular Cues

Depth cues that are dependent on having two eyes

Convergence

Binocular cue in which an object gets closer to our face, our eyes must move toward each other to keep focused on the object; the brain receives feedback from the muscles controlling eye movement and knows the more the eyes converge, the closer the object must be.

Muller-Lyer Illusion

A famous experiment or illusion that illustrates that some of the perceptual rules psychologists once thought were innate are actually learned, and therefore potentially impacted by culture.