Chapter 3: Sensation and Perception

Cochlea

________: snail- shaped structure of the inner ear that is filled with fluid.

Proximity

________: a Gestalt principle of perception, the tendency to perceive objects that are close to each other as part of the same grouping; physical or geographical nearness.

Habituation

________: the tendency of the brain to stop attending to constant, unchanging info.

Aerial

________ (atmospheric) perspective: monocular depth perception cue, the haziness that surrounds objects that are farther away from the viewer, causing the distance to be perceived as greater.

Accommodation

________: as a monocular cue of depth perception, the brains use of information about the changing thickness of the lens of the eye in response to looking at objects that are close or far away.

Auditory canal

________: a short tunnel that runs from the pinna to the eardrum.

Vestibular Sense

________: the awareness of the balance, position, and movement of the head and body through space in relation to gravitys pull.

Müller Lyer

________ illusion: illusion of line length that is distorted by inward- turning or outward- turning corners on the ends of the lines, causing lines of equal length to appear to be different.

Interposition

________: monocular depth perception cue, the assumption that an object that appears to be blocking part of another object is in front of the second object and closer to the viewer.

Synesthesia

________: disorder in which the signals from the various sensory organs are processed in the wrong cortical areas, resulting in the sense information being interpreted as more than one sensation.

Afterimage

________: images that occur when a visual sensation persists for a brief time even after the original stimulus is removed.

Proprioception

________: awareness of where the body and body parts are located in relation to each other in space.

special receptors

Sensation: the process that occurs when ________ in the sense organs are activated, allowing various forms of outside stimuli to become neural signals in the brain.

Blind

________ Spot: area in the retina where the axons of the three layers of retinal cells exit the eye to form the optic nerve; insensitive to light.

Transduction

________: the process of converting outside stimuli, such as light, into neural activity.

Kinesthesia

________: the awareness of body movement.

Contiguity

________: a Gestalt principle of perception, the tendency to perceive two things that happen close together in time being related 3.15 Depth Perception.

Auditory nerve

________: bundle of axons from the hair cells in the inner ear.

Hertz

________ (Hz): cycles or waves per second, a measurement of frequency.

Rods

________: visual sensory receptors found at the back of the retina, responsible for noncolor sensitivity to low levels of light.

Texture Gradient

________: monocular depth perception cue, the tendency for textured surfaces to appear to become smaller and finer as distance from the viewer increases.

Visual Accommodation

________: the change in the thickness of the lens as the eye focuses on objects that are far away close.

Relative Size

________: monocular depth perception cue, perception that occurs when objects that a person expects to be of a certain size appear to be small and are, therefore, assumed to be much farther away.

Olfaction

________ (olfactory sense): the sensation of smell.

Perceptual Set

________ (Perceptual Expectancy): the tendency to perceive things a certain way because previous experiences or expectations influence those perceptions.

Sensory Conflict Theory

________: an explanation of motion sickness in which the information from the eyes conflicts with the info from the vestibular, resulting in dizziness, nausea, and other physical discomforts The ABCs of Perception 3.14 How We Organize Our Perceptions.

Volley Principle

________: theory of pitch that states that frequencies from about 400 Hz to 4000 Hz cause the hair cells (auditory neurons) to fire in a volley pattern, or take turns in firing 3.9 Types of Hearing Impairments.

Motion Parallax

________: monocular depth perception cue, the perception of motion of objects in which close objects appear to move more quickly than objects that are farther away.

Linear Perspective

________: monocular depth perception cue, the tendency for parallel lines to appear to converge on each other.

Pinna

________: the visible part of the ear.

Sensory Adaptation

________: the tendency of sensory receptor cells to become less responsive to a stimulus that is unchanging The Science of Seeing 3.4 Light and the Eye.

Signal Detection Theory

________: provides a method for assessing the accuracy of judgments or decisions under uncertain conditions; used in perception research and other areas.

Cones

________: visual sensory receptors found at the back of the retina, responsible for color vision and sharpness of vision.

Top Down Processing

________: the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual features into a unified whole.

Perception

________: the method by which the sensations experienced at any given moment are interpreted and organized in some meaningful fashion.

Brightness Constancy

________: the tendency to perceive the apparent brightness of an object as the same even when the light conditions change.

Binocular Disparity

________: binocular depth perception cue, the difference in images between the two eyes, which is greater for objects that are close and smaller for distant objects 3.16 Perception Illusions.

Size Constancy

________: the tendency to interpret an object as always being the same actual size, regardless of its distance.