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What is sensation?
The process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.
What is bottom-up processing?
Information processing that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain’s integration of sensory information.
What is top-down processing?
Information processing guided by high-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.
What is prosopagnosia?
A cognitive disorder of face perception where the ability to recognize faces is impaired.
What is blindsight?
A neurological condition where someone can perceive the location of an object, despite having damage to the visual cortex.
What is transduction?
The conversion of one form of energy into another.
What is the absolute threshold?
The minimum stimulation necessary to detect a particular light, sound, pressure, taste, or odor 50% of the time.
What is just noticeable difference?
The smallest amount by which two sensory stimuli can differ in order for an individual to perceive them as different.
What does Weber's Law state?
The degree to which stimuli need to be different for the difference to be detected.
What is sensory adaptation?
Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.
What determines the hue we experience in light?
The distance from one wave peak to the next, known as light's wavelength.
What does the amplitude of light's wavelength determine?
Its intensity, or the amount of energy the wave contains.
What is the role of the lens in the eye?
It changes shape to help focus images on the retina.
What is accommodation in the context of vision?
The process where the lens changes its curvature and thickness to focus rays.
What is the retina?
A layer of tissue at the back of the eye.
What is the fovea?
The central point in the retina.
What is nearsightedness?
A condition where the lens focuses the image on a point in front of the retina, allowing clear vision of near objects but not distant objects.
What is farsightedness?
A condition where the lens focuses the image on a point behind the retina, allowing better vision of distant objects than near objects.
What do photoreceptors do?
They convert light into electrical signals that are sent to the visual nerve for brain processing.
What are rods?
Retinal photoreceptors that detect black, white, and gray and are sensitive to movement.
What are cones?
Retinal photoreceptors that detect color and are located in the fovea.
What do ganglion cells do?
They receive information from bipolar cells and their axons twine together to form the optic nerve.
What is the visual nerve?
Also known as the optic nerve, it carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.
What is the blind spot?
The area where the optic nerve leaves the eye, which has no receptor cells.
What does the trichromatic theory state?
That the types of cones can make millions of combinations of colors.
What is the opponent-process theory?
The theory that sensory receptors come in pairs; if one color is stimulated, the other is inhibited.
What are afterimages?
Visual sensations that remain after the original stimulus has been removed, often when certain ganglion cells are activated.
What are monochromats?
Individuals who have total color blindness, perceiving their world in shades of black and white.
What are dichromats?
Individuals who have trouble distinguishing red from green due to having only two kinds of cones.
What does amplitude refer to in sound?
The perceived loudness of the waves, measured by the height of the waves.
What is pitch in terms of sound?
A tone’s experienced highness or lowness, which relates to the length of the sound waves.
What is the cochlea?
A snail-shaped tube in the inner ear that plays a critical role in hearing.
What is vestibular sense?
Our sense of body position and balance, located above the cochlea in the inner ear.
What do semicircular canals do?
They contain fluid and move in response to head movements, helping to control vestibular sense.
What is conduction deafness?
Hearing loss caused by damage to the eardrum or middle ear bones that conduct sound waves to the cochlea.
What is sensorineural deafness?
Hearing loss due to damage to the cochlea's cells or the auditory nerve.
What does place theory suggest?
That we hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different locations along the cochlea's membrane.
What does frequency theory suggest?
That the brain reads pitch by monitoring the frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve.
What is volley theory?
The idea that neural cells can alternate firing to achieve a combined frequency and code for pitches above 1000 waves per second.
What is localizing sound?
The ability to determine the direction of a sound source, which varies depending on whether the sound comes from the side or directly ahead.
