Unit 4 Vocab - Mod 16 & 17

Sensation

Sensation

The process by which our sensory receptors nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting sensory info enabling us to recognize meaningful object and events.

Bottom Up Processing

Analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brains integration of sensory info.

Top Down Processing

Info processing guided by higher level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations.

Selective Attention

The focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

In-attentional Blindness

Failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

Change Blindness

Failing to notice changes in the environment.

Transduction

Conversion of one form of energy into another. The transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret.

Psychophysics

The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.

Absolute Threshold

The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.

Signal Detection Theory

Theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation.

Subliminal

Below ones absolute threshold for conscious awareness’s.

Priming

The activation, unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one’s perception memory or response.

Difference Threshold

The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time.

Webers Law

Principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage - rather than a constant amount.

Sensory Adaption

Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.

Sensory Receptors

A sensory nerve ending that responds to a stimulus in the internal or external environment of an organism.

Change Deafness

Failing to notice change in auditory stimulus.

Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input.

Perceptual Set

A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not anouther.

Psychokinesis

Ability to move objects with one’s mind.

Parapsychology

The study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.

Choice Blindness

When defending the choice we make, we fail to notice choice was changed.

Context

Words, events or circumstances that help determine meaning.

Pretension

A claim or the assertion of a claim to something.

Gustav Fechner

Early German psychologist credited with founding psychophysics, came up with the term absolute threshold.

Ernst Weber

Best known for Weber’s law the notion that the GND magnitude is proportional to the stimulus magnitude.

Prosopagnosia

Inability to recognize familiar faces.