Studied by 1 person
Sensation
The process by which sensory receptors receive information from the environment; includes vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, and the vestibular and kinesthetic senses.
Transduction
Conversion of one form of energy into another, as when environmental stimuli are transformed into neural signals.
Receptors
Specialized structures that detect specific types of environmental stimuli and transduce them into neural signals.
Absolute threshold
The minimum stimulation required for a particular stimulus to be detected 50% of the time.
Just-noticeable difference (JND)
The smallest change in stimulation that a person can detect 50% of the time.
Weber's law
States that the size of the JND is directly proportional to the strength of the original stimulus.
Signal-detection theory (SDT)
A theory that explains how individuals distinguish between meaningful sensory signals and random noise.
Cornea
The transparent, protective outer layer of the eye that bends light waves to assist in proper focus.
Iris
A piece of muscle tissue that sits behind the cornea and helps the eye adjust how much light enters. It gives the eye its color.
Pupil
A small, adjustable opening that is constricted or dilated by the iris. Constriction decreases the amount of light entering while dilation increases the amount of light entering.
Lens
A transparent structure that sits behind the pupil and can adjust its shape to bend light for proper focus (working with the cornea).
Accommodation
The process by which the lens changes shape to focus on near or far objects by adjusting how light hits the retina.
Sclera
The white part of the eye that provides structural support and contains blood vessels.
Retina
The light-sensitive inner surface of the eye containing a vast network of photoreceptors.
Photoreceptors
Specialized light-sensitive neurons in the retina that convert light into neural impulses; includes rods and cones.
Rod
A type of photoreceptor that processes black, white, and gray light; clustered in the retina's periphery.
Cone
A type of photoreceptor that distinguishes colors and detects fine details in well-lit conditions; clustered in the fovea.
Fovea
A small indentation at the center of the retina that contains the highest concentration of cones.
Visual acuity
The ability to see fine details.
Optic nerve
A bundle of retinal ganglion axons that carries information from the eye to the thalamus.
Blind spot
The location where the optic nerve exits the eye, preventing vision.
Visual cortex
The structure in the occipital lobe that integrates visual information and produces vision.
Feature detectors
Specialized nerve cells in the visual cortex that respond to particular elements like shape, movement, edges, and angles.
Trichromatic theory
Developed by Helmholtz and Young and also known as three-color theory, it suggests that the retina has three color receptors that are sensitive to red, green, and blue light.
Opponent-process theory
Developed by Hering, it suggests that the retina has receptors for three opposing pairs of colors: white-black, red-green, and yellow-blue.
Afterimages
Images that remain visible after viewing an object. A negative afterimage reverses the colors in the original image.
Color blindness
A diminished capacity to see differences in color; also called color vision deficiency.
Audition
The process of transducing acoustic energy into perceivable sound; also known as hearing.
Pinna
The outermost part of the ear that funnels sound waves into the ear's auditory canal.
Auditory canal
Focuses sound waves collected by the pinna and funnels them toward the eardrum.
Tympanic membrane
A tight, thin membrane that vibrates when hit by sound waves; also known as the eardrum.
Middle ear
Composed of three ossicles, or small bones, that work together to concentrate sound from the tympanic membrane and transmit it to the inner ear.
Malleus
One of the three ossicles; also known as the hammer.
Incus
One of the three ossicles; also known as the anvil.
Stapes
One of the three ossicles; also known as the stirrup.
Inner ear
The innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, auditory nerve, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs.
Oval window
A membrane that transmits vibrations from the ossicles in the middle ear to the cochlea in the inner ear.
Cochlea
A fluid-filled snail-shaped tube in the inner ear that transmits vibrations from the oval window to receptor hair cells in the basilar membrane, where they are converted into neural impulses.
Place theory
Maintains that pitch is perceived through activation of neurons at different locations on the cochlea.
Temporal theory
Maintains that pitch is perceived through the frequency at which neurons in the cochlea fire; also called frequency theory.
Volley theory
A supplement to the temporal theory that maintains higher frequencies are encoded through the firing of multiple, out-of-sync neurons.
Cochlear implant
An electronic device that directly stimulates the auditory nerve to provide a sense of hearing to a hearing-impaired individual.
Mechanical senses
Senses such as hearing and touch that respond to pressure, bending, or other physical distortions of a receptor.
Chemical senses
Senses such as taste and smell that arise from the interactions of specific chemical compounds and receptors.
Gustation
The process by which specific compounds are detected after coming into contact with receptors on the tongue; also known as taste.
Olfaction
The process by which airborne compounds are detected after coming into contact with receptors in the nose; also known as smell.
Taste buds
Specialized receptors in the mouth that detect specific types of chemicals; they detect flavors including salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami.
Papillae
Protrusions on the tongue that contain taste buds.
Olfactory bulb
The smell center of the brain, which receives and processes chemical information from the olfactory nerve.
Tactile sensations
Touch, pain, temperature and other bodily sensations detected by receptors just inside the skin.
Proprioception
A somatic sense of the position of your body in space.
Kinesthesis
A somatic sense of the movement of your body in space.
Vestibular sense
The somatic sense that allows an individual to coordinate movement and maintain balance.
Semicircular canals
Fluid-filled structures in the inner ear that help to maintain balance.
Nociceptors
Pain receptors found under the skin. They respond to stimuli like intense pressures, extreme temperatures, and caustic chemicals.
Gate-control theory
Theory suggesting that the spinal cord acts like a neurological gate that can open or close to manage whether pain signals travel to the brain.
Perception
The process of integrating and interpreting sensory data.
Gestalt psychology
A subfield of psychology that suggests that the brain forms a perceptual whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.
Depth perception
The ability to see three-dimensional objects and judge distance, even though the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional.
Convergence
The slight inward rotation of the eyes that occurs when viewing closer objects, which can be used to gauge distance.
Retinal disparity
The difference between the images seen by each eye, which can be used to gauge distance.
Stroboscopic motion
The illusion of apparent movement caused by viewing a continuous series of slightly differing images.
Bottom-up processing
The perceptual process of starting with basic sensory data and integrating them into a more complex whole.
Top-down processing
The perceptual process in which memories, expectations, and other factors give organization to the whole of perception.
Müller-Lyer illusion
An optical illusion consisting of two line segments, one with arrows pointing inward and one with arrows pointing outward. Though both lines are of equal length, the line with the inward-pointing arrows is typically perceived to be longer.
Attention
The focus of awareness on particular aspects of perception.
Selective attention
Allows individuals to focus their awareness on a specific stimulus while ignoring all other stimuli.
Cocktail party effect
Describes an individual's ability to attend to only one voice even with extensive and varied background noise.
Cognition
The process of thinking or mentally processing information such as concepts, language, and images.
Automatic processing
The unconscious processing of incidental or well-learned information.
Effortful processing
Active processing of information that requires sustained effort.
Shallow processing
Processing information based on its surface characteristics.
Deep processing
Processing information with respect to its meaning.
Focused attention
The ability to concentrate on a single target stimulus.
Divided attention
The ability to focus on two or more stimuli simultaneously; colloquially known as multitasking.
Trial-and-error
A less sophisticated type of problem-solving approach in which different solutions are tried until the correct one is found.
Algorithm
A step-by-step procedure that guarantees a solution to a problem.
Heuristic
A simple thinking strategy or technique that allows one to make judgments efficiently.
Availability heuristic
A mental shortcut through which judgments are based on the information that is most easily brought to mind.
Representativeness heuristic
A mental shortcut that involves judging whether something belongs in a given class on the basis of its similarity to other members of that class.
Insight
A sudden and often completely new realization of the solution to a problem.
Creativity
The ability to create ideas that are new.
Convergent thinking
Thinking that is directed to the discovery of a single right solution.
Divergent thinking
Thinking that produces many alternatives and promotes open-ended thought.
Overconfidence
The tendency to overestimate the correctness of your beliefs and judgments.
Belief bias
Making illogical conclusions in order to confirm your preexisting beliefs.
Belief perseverance
The tendency to maintain a belief even after the evidence you used to form the belief is proven wrong.
Confirmation bias
The tendency to search for information that supports your existing beliefs and to ignore evidence that contradicts what you think is true.
Fixation
The tendency to repeat wrong solutions as a result of becoming blind to alternatives.
Mental set
The tendency to use old patterns to solve new problems.
Functional fixedness
The tendency to think about familiar objects only in familiar ways.
Memory
Learning that has persisted over time and information that has been stored and can be retrieved.
Encoding
The process of putting new information into memory.
Acoustic codes
The encoding of information as sequences of sounds.
Visual codes
The encoding of information as pictures.
Semantic codes
The encoding of information with respect to its meaning.
Imagery
A set of mental pictures that serves as an aid to effortful processing.
Self-reference effect
The tendency to recall information best when it is put into a personal context.
Sensory memory
The stage of memory that holds an exact copy of incoming information for just a few seconds.
Iconic memory
Visual sensory memory.
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