Unit Three: Sensation and Perception

Sensation

The conversion of energy from the environment into a pattern of response by the nervous system (registration of information) is known as...

Perception

How we recognize, interpret, and organize sensory information is known as...

Distal

With visual sensation, the object as it exists in the environment is known as the ____ stimulus.

Proximal

With visual sensation, the image of an object on the retina is called the ___ stimulus.

Cornea

In the visual sensation process, first light passes through the ___ which is a protective layer on the outside of the eye.

Retina

The ___ is at the back of the eye and serves as the screen onto which the proximal stimulus is projected.

Rods

Located on the periphery of the retina, ___ are sensitive to low light.

Cones

Located in the center of the retina, ___ are sensitive to bright light and color vision.

Fovea

The ___ is located in the center of the retina and is adaptive to highly detailed vision.

Dark adaption

The gradual improvement in the ability to see in dim light is known as...

Bipolar and amacrine

After light stimulates the receptors in the retina, the information passes through horizontal cells to ___ cells.

Optic

The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain is the ___ nerve.

Optic chiasm

The optic nerves cross at the ___, sending half of the information from each visual field to the opposite side of the brain.

Contralateral shift

Reviewing from previous Biological unit and tying it to this unit, the term for when half of each optic nerve (vision) crosses to the opposite side of the brain is...

Young-Helmholtz (trichromatic)

Theory of vision that the retina contains three different color receptors - one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue - which when stimulated in combination can produce the perception of any color is known as...

Accommodation

The process by which the eye's lens change shape to focus near or far objects on the retina is known as...

Convergence

The extent to which the eyes turn inward when looking at an object (the greater the inward strain, the closer the object) is known as...

Transduction

Through a process called ___, receptors convert the input, or stimulus, into neural impulses, which are then sent to the brain.

Receptor

Sensory organs have specialized cells, known as ___ cells, which are designed to detect specific types of energy.

Receptive

With sensation, the area from which our receptor cells receive input is the ___ field.

Sensory coding

The process by which receptors convey such a wide range of stimuli and information to the brain is known as...

Opponent Process

The theory for color vision that believes cells within the thalamus respond to opponent pairs of receptors sets - namely black/white, red/green, and blue/yellow - and if one color of the set is activated, the other is essentially turned off, is known as...

Color constancy

The tendency of an object to appear nearly the same color under a variety of lighting conditions is known as...

Negative afterimage

The concept that supports the opponent process theory of color vision (since if you stare at an object and then direct your sight to a plain white sheet, you see the opposite color of basic color pairings like red/green) is called...

Loudness

The "height" of a sound wave is known as ____ and determines its intensity and is measured by decibels.

Frequency

The "length" of a sound wave that determines pitch and is measured in hertzs is known as...

Cochlea

The snail-shaped organ in the ear which contains the receptors for hearing is the...

Vestibular

The sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance is known as your ___ sense.

Kinesthesis

The system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts is known as...

Cutaneous and tactile

The skin has ___ receptors that provide information about pressure, pain, and temperature.

Gustation

The chemical sense of taste is also known as...

Conductive

Injury to the outer or middle ear structures (such as the eardrum) can result in ___ deafness.

Sensorineural (or nerve)

Impairment of some structure or structures from the cochlea to the auditory cortex results in ____ deafness.

Myopia

The technical term for nearsightedness is...

Hyperopia

The technical term for farsightedness is...

Tympanic membrane

Also called eardrum, the ____ is a thin layer of tissue in the human ear that receives sound vibrations from the outer ear and transmits them to the auditory ossicles.

Ossicles

The three bones in either middle ear (the malleus, incus, and stapes) that are among the smallest bones in the human body and serve to transmit sounds from the air to the cochlea are known collectively as the...

Stapes

The ossicles bone that is responsible for the conduction of sound vibrations to the inner ear is the....

Basilar membrane

Which of the following is located within the cochlea of the inner ear; forms the base of the organ of Corti, which contains sensory receptors for hearing.

Vestibular sacs

What is located in the inner ear and is responsible for balance and have receptors sensitive to tilting?

Place

In hearing, the ____ theory links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated.

Frequency

In hearing, the ____ theory states that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense pitch.

Olfaction

The chemical sense of smell is also known as...

Occiptial lobe

The processing center for vision is the...

Temporal lobe

The processing center for hearing is the...

Somatosensory cortex (parietal lobe)

The processing center for your tactile sense is the...

Olfactory bulb

The processing center for you olfaction sense is the...

Cerebral cortex

The processing center for gustation is the...

Absolute threshold

The minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time (Smallest amount of stimulation we can detect)...

Just Noticeable Difference

The minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50% of the time (Smallest amount of change needed in a stimulus before we detect a change)...

Weber's Law

Used to measure the Just Noticeable Difference (Difference/discrimination threshold); Principle that to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount)...

Signal Detection Theory

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

Hit

(Part of the Signal Detection Theory) When the signal was present, and the participant reported sensing it, it is a...

Miss

(Part of the Signal Detection Theory) When the signal was present, but the participant did not sense it, it is a...

Correct Rejection

(Part of the Signal Detection Theory) When the signal was absent, and the participant did not report sensing it, it is a...

False Alarm

(Part of the Signal Detection Theory) When the signal was absent, but the participant reported sensing it, it is a...

Subliminal threshold

Preconscious processing that occurs when we are presented with stimuli so rapidly that we are not consciously aware of them...

Mere-exposure effect

Phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them...

Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon

Try to recall something that we already know that is available but not easily accessible to consciousness...

Habituation

Diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation...

Top-down processing

Which type of processing involves filling in gaps in what we sense by using our background knowledge (so it is a quick processing)

Schemata

Mental representations of how we expect the world to be...

Perceptual set

Predisposition to perceiving something in a certain way...

Bottom-up processing

What type of processing involves breaking it down into its component parts and using only the features of the object itself to build a complete perception?

Law of Pragnanz

The minimum tendency (or how we tend to see objects in their simplest forms)...

Gestalt perception

Principles of how we organize perceptions into meaningful wholes like proximity, similarity, continuity (Continuation), closure, and connectedness (common fate)...

Stroboscopic effect

When images in a series of still pictures presented at a certain speed to appear to be moving (like flip books)...

Phi phenomenon

When something is turned off and on at a particular rate to appear to be one moving light...

Autokinetic effect

When a spot of light projected onto the same place on a wall of an otherwise dark room and people are asked to stare at it, they will report seeing it move, it is known as...

Feature-detector approach

The early stages of visual perception where specialized neurons in the visual cortex that respond to the presence of certain simple features, such as lines and angles...

Serial processing

With perception, the act of attending to and processing one item at a time is known as...

Parallel processing

With perception, the ability of the brain to simultaneously process incoming stimuli of differing quality is known as...

Relative size

The monocular depth cue used when images that are farther from us project a smaller image on the retina than do those that are closer to us is known as...

Texture gradient

The monocular depth cue used where textures or patterns of distribution of objects appear to grow more dense as distance increases is known as...

Interposition

The monocular depth cue used when a near object partially blocks the view of an object behind it (and is also known as occlusion) is known as...

Vanishing point

The monocular depth cue used when two lines become indistinguishable from a single line and then disappear is known as...

Aerial perspective

The perceptual cue based on the observation that atmospheric moisture and dust tend to obscure objects in the distance more than they do nearby objects is known as...

Relative clarity

The perceptual cue that explains why less distinct, fuzzy images appear to be more distant is...

Motion parallax

The difference in the apparent movement of objects at different distances, when the observer is in motion is the perceptual cue of...

Stereopsis

The three-dimensional image of the world resulting from binocular vision is known as...

Retinal convergence

The depth cue that results from the fact that your eyes must turn inward slightly to focus on near objects is...

Binocular disparity

This results from the fact that the closer an object is, the less similar the information arriving at each eye will be.

Eleanor Gibson

Who conducted an experiment on depth perception that basically concluded depth perception is an innate ability?

Visual cliff

Gibson used the ___ to test depth perception on babies.

Proximity

The Gestalt principle of figure detection where we have the tendency to see objects near to each other as forming groups is...

Similarity

The Gestalt principle of figure detection where we have the tendency to prefer to group like objects together is...

Symmetry

The Gestalt principle of figure detection where we have the tendency to perceive preferentially forms that make up mirror images is...

Continuity

The Gestalt principle of figure detection where we have the tendency to perceive preferentially fluid or continuous forms, rather than jagged or irregular ones is....

Closure

The Gestalt principle of figure detection where we have the tendency preferentially to see closed objects rather than those that are not complete is...

Sensory coding

The process by which receptors convey a wide range of information (colors, intensities, etc.) to the brain is known as...

Qualitative

With sensory coding, the stimulus dimension that indicates what it is like a sound or light for sight is the ____ dimension.

Quantitative

With sensory coding, the stimulus dimension that indicates how much of the stimulus there is like wavelengths and frequencies is the ___ dimension.

Single cell recording

The technique by which the firing rate and pattern of a single receptor cell can be measured in response to varying sensory input is known as...

Bipolar and Ganglion Cells

Within the retina, information travels from the photoreceptors to the these cells and then on to the optic nerve.

Hubel and Wiesel

Co-won a Noble Prize for ocular dominance; experiments determined that mammals will develop normal vision along the lines of two paths (ventral stream and dorsal stream) so long as any impairments are corrected during the critical period of the first months after birth.

Ocular Dominance

The tendency to prefer visual input from one eye to the other

Gustav Fechner

Founder of psychophysics, demonstrated the non-linear relationship between sensation and physical intensity (determined that the perceived brightness/loudness of a sensation is proportional to the logarithm of its actual intensity.)

Psychophysics

The branch of psychology that deals with the effects of physical stimuli on sensory response (smallest amounts needed to be detected)

Dichromats

Form of color-blindness where people cannot distinguish along the red/green or blue/yellow continuums.

Monochromats

Form of color-blindness that is rare but involves seeing only in shades of black and white.