Psychology: Sensation, Perception, and Consciousness

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering key definitions, theories, and physiological mechanisms from Chapter 6 (Sensation and Perception) and Chapter 7 (Consciousness).

Consciousness

Your awareness of, and responsiveness to, your surroundings and mental processes.

Sentience

The ability to know ourselves subjectively.

Attention

The internal processes used to set priorities for mental functioning, which helps coordinate and control behavior.

Dichotic Listening Technique

An experimental technique where different auditory messages are presented separately and simultaneously to each ear, and the subject is tasked with repeating aloud one message while ignoring the other.

Cocktail Party Effect

The ability to focus on one auditory message and ignore others, as well as the tendency to notice when your name suddenly appears in an actively ignored message.

Automaticity

Fast and effortless processing that requires little or no focused attention, typically measured through a divided attention task.

Visual Neglect

A disorder of attention characterized by a tendency to ignore things appearing on one side of the body (typically the left), resulting from damage to the right parietal lobe.

Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

A psychological disorder marked by difficulties in concentrating or sustaining attention for extended periods, affecting $3\text{--}7\%$ of children and occurring $3$ times more commonly in boys.

Circadian Rhythms

Biological activities that rise and fall in accordance with a $24$-hour cycle.

Suprachiasmatic Nucleus

A structure located in the hypothalamus that regulates the sleep/wakefulness circadian rhythm.

Zeitgeber

An environmental cue or 'time giver' (such as light) that synchronizes the circadian rhythm for sleep.

Sleep Spindles

Short bursts of brain activity occurring about $2\text{--}5$ times per minute during Stage 2 sleep that may play a role in memory consolidation.

K-Complexes

Sudden, sharp EEG waves occurring roughly $1$ time per minute during Stage 2 sleep, often triggered by noises.

REM Sleep

A stage of sleep characterized by rapid eye movement, desynchronized theta and beta EEG activity, muscle paralysis, increased genital activity, and vivid dreaming.

Manifest Content

In Freudian dream analysis, the actual symbols and events experienced directly within a dream.

Latent Content

In Freudian dream analysis, the true, hidden psychological meaning underlying dream symbols.

Activation-Synthesis Hypothesis

The theory that dreams represent the brain's attempt to make sense of random patterns of neural activity generated during sleep.

Dyssomnias

A primary category of sleep disorders involving problems connected with the amount, timing, and quality of sleep (e.g., insomnia, hypersomnia, narcolepsy).

Parasomnias

A primary category of sleep disorders characterized by abnormal behavioral or physiological disturbances that occur during sleep (e.g., nightmares, night terrors, sleepwalking).

Physical Dependence

A condition in which a person continues to take a drug to avoid unpleasant physical withdrawal symptoms.

Psychological Dependence

A non-physical dependence that occurs when continued use of a drug is driven by cravings.

Drug Tolerance

A state where the brain adjusts endogenous neurotransmission to compensate for drug use, requiring an individual to increase dosage to produce the same physical and behavioral effects.

Depressants

A category of psychoactive drugs that slow or depress central nervous system activity, typically by increasing levels of GABA and dopamine.

Stimulants

A class of psychoactive drugs that increase central nervous system activity and enhance neural transmission, elevating alertness, heart rate, respiration, and blood pressure.

Hallucinogens

A class of psychoactive drugs (psychedelics) that disrupt normal mental and emotional functioning, distort perception, and alter reality.

Hypnosis

A form of social interaction that produces a heightened state of suggestibility in a willing participant.

Meditation

A technique for self-induced manipulation of awareness, often used for relaxation and self-reflection by stepping back from the ongoing stream of mental activity.

Sensations

How our body detects external physical stimuli and converts them into a format that the brain can use; the elementary components of an experience.

Perception

How we recognize, interpret, and make sense of sensory information.

Transduction

The process by which sensory receptor cells transform external stimuli into electrical impulses (action potentials) that travel to the brain via the nervous system.

Signal Detection Theory

A framework addressing our ability to detect a real or desired stimulus occurring amid other random or intervening stimuli.

Accommodation

The process by which the lens changes shape (flattening for distance or becoming fatter for nearby objects) to focus incoming light on the retina.

Rods

Photoreceptor cells located mostly around the periphery of the retina (numbering around $120{,}000{,}000$) that are highly sensitive in dim light and process dark, basic shapes.

Cones

Photoreceptor cells concentrated in the central retina (numbering around $6{,}000{,}000$) that operate best in high light and process the '4 C’s': Color, Clear, Concise, and Center.

Optic Disc

The point in the retina where ganglion cell axons group together to exit toward the brain, creating an area with no photoreceptors known as the blind spot.

Feature Detectors

Cells in the visual cortex that respond to very specific visual events, such as bars of light at particular orientations, edges, movement, or faces.

Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision

The theory stating that color vision depends on three types of cones in the retina that maximally respond to red, blue, or green wavelengths of light.

Opponent Process Theory of Color Vision

The theory proposing that visual cells process color by increasing activation to one color and decreasing activation to another (e.g., red versus green, blue versus yellow).

Bottom-Up Processing

Sensory processing that is stimulus-driven and directly controlled by the physical message delivered to the sensory receptors.

Top-Down Processing

Sensory processing that is conceptually driven and governed by one's prior knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about how the world is organized.

Retinal Disparity

A binocular depth cue based on the differences between the locations of images projected onto the two retinas.

Convergence

A binocular depth cue where the eyes turn inward toward one another to focus as a stimulus approaches closer.

Place Theory

The theory of pitch perception proposing that the pitch we hear is determined by the specific region or location of the basilar membrane activated within the cochlea.

Frequency Theory

The theory of pitch perception proposing that pitch is determined by the rate or frequency of neural impulses traveling up the auditory pathway.

Gate-Control Theory

The model proposing that neural impulses generated by pain receptors can be blocked, or gated, in the spinal cord by brain signals or large-fiber stimulation.

Kinesthesis

The body sense that provides information about the movement of limbs in space via specialized stretch receptors in the muscles called muscle spindles.

Vestibular Sense

The sense of balance, movement, and gravity mediated by fluid-filled canals located within the inner ear.

Synesthesia

A neurological condition affecting $2\text{--}4\%$ of the population in which stimulation in one sensory modality produces involuntary perceptual experiences in a different sense.

Misophonia

A neurological condition in which specific auditory sounds trigger intense emotional responses, such as rage, disgust, or anxiety.