Key Concepts in Sensation, Consciousness, and Learning

Absolute threshold

amount of stimulus energy that a person can detect.

Attention

process of focusing awareness on a narrow aspect of the environment.

Bottom-up

sensory receptors register information about the external environment and send it up to the brain for interpretation.

Chemoreceptors

detection of chemical stimuli (smell and taste).

Chemical senses

smell and taste.

Cocktail party effect

(automatic selection) ignore all other stimuli in the area.

Color blindness

ability to see certain colors but not every color.

Difference threshold

degree of difference that must exist between two stimuli before the difference is detected. (noticeable difference).

Endorphins

(natural pain relievers) any of a group of hormones secreted within the brain and nervous system and having a number of physiological functions.

Gestalt psychology

a school of thought interested in how people naturally organize their perceptions by certain patterns.

Inattentional blindness

failure to detect an unexpected event.

Neural pathways

a series of connected neurons that send signals from one part of the brain to another.

Perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information so that it makes sense.

Perceptual sets

predisposition or readiness to perceive something in a particular way.

Phantom limb pain

pain occurring in a limb that has been amputated.

Selective attention

focusing on a specific aspect of experience while ignoring others.

Sensation

process of receiving stimulus energies into neural energy.

Sensory adaptation

change in the responsiveness of the sensory system based on the average level of surrounding stimulation.

Signal detection

(theory) focuses on decision making about stimuli under conditions of uncertainty.

Subliminal perception

detection of information below the level of conscious awareness.

Touch

type of sensory receptor cell.

Trichromatic theory

color perception is produced by three types of cone receptors in the retina that are particularly sensitive to different, but overlapping, ranges of wavelengths.

Top-down

begins in the brain with cognitive processing.

Umami

Japanese taste, means delicious or yummy. It is L-glutamate's flavor.

Weber's law

principle that two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion to be perceived as different.

Altered state consciousness

mental states that are noticeably different from normal awareness.

Alcohol

powerful drug that affects the body as a depressant that slows down the brain's activities.

Automatic processing

states of consciousness that require little attention and do not interfere with other ongoing activities.

Circadian rhythm

daily behavioral or physiological cycles.

Controlled process

individuals actively focus their efforts toward a goal, most states of human consciousness.

Cognitive control

ability to maintain attention by reducing interfering thoughts and being cognitively flexible.

Daydreaming

involves a low-level conscious effort, is a state of consciousness.

Depressants

psychoactive drugs that slow down mental and physical activity.

Dreaming

most vivid version occurs in REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep.

Hypnosis

altered state of consciousness or a psychological state of altered attention and expectation in which the individual is unusually receptive to suggestions.

Insomnia

inability to sleep.

Jet lag

the result of two or more body rhythms being out of sync.

Meditation

attaining a peaceful state of mind in which thoughts are not occupied by worry.

Nightmare

frightening dream that awakens a dreamer from REM sleep.

REM sleep

(rapid eye movement) active stage of sleep during which the most vivid dreaming occurs.

Sleepwalking

occurs during the deepest stages of sleep, also called somnambulism.

Stimulants

psychoactive drugs that increase the central nervous system's activity.

Subconscious awareness

happens when one is awake/sleeping, or dreaming.

Theory of the mind

a person's understanding that others think, feel, perceive, and have private experiences.

Tolerance

the need to take increasing amounts of a drug to get the same effect.

Withdrawal

negative feelings after stopping drug use, some people go back to using as they cannot take it.

Associative learning

occurs when an organism makes a connection, or an association, between two events.

Aversive conditioning

form of treatment that consists of repeated pairings of a stimulus with a very unpleasant stimulus.

Behaviorism

theory of learning that focuses solely on observable behaviors, discounting the importance of mental activity such as thinking, wishing, and hoping.

Classical Conditioning

neutral stimulus (the sound of a toilet flushing) becomes associated with an innately meaningful stimulus (the pain of scalding hot water) and acquires the capacity to elicit a similar response (panic).

Conditioned Stimulus

(CS) stimulus that becomes able to produce a learned response by being paired with the original unconditioned stimulus.

Response

(CR) learned, reflex-like response to a conditioned stimulus.

Continuous reinforcement

a behavior is reinforced every time it occurs.

Delayed reinforcement

putting something off until later, might have bigger negative consequences.

Extinction

happens when a behavior is no longer reinforced and decreases in frequency.

Insight learning

a form of problem solving in which the organism develops a sudden insight into or understanding of a problem's solution.

Learning

a systematic, relatively permanent change in behavior that occurs through experience.

Learned helplessness

organism learned that it has no control over negative outcomes.

Negative reinforcement

frequency of a behavior increases because it is followed by the removal of something undesirable.

Negative punishment

a behavior decreases when a stimulus is removed.

Observational learning

(imitation, modeling) learning that occurs when a person observes and imitates behavior.

Operant conditioning

organisms learn association between behavior and consequence.

Partial reinforcement

a reinforcer follows a behavior only a portion of the time.

Pavlov

found that neutral or arbitrary aspects of the environment may attain the capacity to evoke responses through pairing with other stimuli and that bodily processes can be influenced by environmental cues.

Placebo effect

the effect of a substance (such as taking a pill orally) or a procedure (such as using a syringe to inject a substance) that researchers use as a control to identify the actual effects of a treatment.

Positive reinforcement

the frequency of a behavior increases because it is followed by a desirable stimulus.

Positive punishment

a behavior decreases when it is followed by the presentation of a stimulus.

Primary reinforcement

innately satisfying, does not require any learning on the organism's part to make it pleasurable.

Punishment

a consequence that decreases the likelihood that a behavior will occur.

Reflexes

automatic stimulus-response connections.

Secondary reinforcement

acquires its positive value through an organism's experience, a learned or conditioned reinforcer.

Shaping

rewarding successive approximations of a desired behavior.

Thorndike's law

(of effect) behaviors followed by pleasant outcomes are strengthened and that behaviors followed by unpleasant outcomes are weakened.

Unconditional Stimuli

(US) stimulus that produces a response without prior learning; food was the US in Pavlov's experiments.