AP Psych - Sensation & Perception

Sensation

The process of detecting, converting, and transmitting raw sensory information from the external and internal environments to the brain.

Perception

Selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensory information into meaningful objects and events.

Attention

The process of focusing conscious awareness onto a specific stimulus while filtering out a range of other stimuli.

Selection

The unconscious decision of what stimuli to attend to.

Organization

Breaking a sensory experience into recognizable parts.

Interpretation

Making meaning of sensory information.

Halle Berry / Grandma Cells

One or a few neurons that fire in response to a familiar face.

Feature Detectors

Specialized neurons that respond only to certain kinds of sensory information.

Transduction

The process whereby sensory receptors convert stimulus into neural impulses to be sent to the brain, such as transforming light waves into neural impulses.

Top-Down Processing

Perceptual process that moves from the whole to the parts.

Bottom-Up Processing

Perceptual processing that moves from the parts to the whole.

Ambiguous Figures

Can be perceived as two or more distinct images.

Autism

A mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and sensory flooding.

Absolute Thresholds

The minimum amount of stimulation necessary to consciously detect a stimulus 50% of the time.

Difference Thresholds

Just noticeable difference.

Habituation

Brain's reduced responsiveness due to repeated stimulation of the same receptors.

Sensory adaptation

Receptor cells become less sensitive due to constant stimulation.

Hearing

The sensory process of turning sound waves into neural messages.

Cochlear Implants

A small, complex electronic device that can help to provide a sense of sound to a person who is profoundly deaf or severely hard-of-hearing.

Music

Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion.

Amusia

The inability to recognize musical tones or to reproduce them.

Amplitude

The maximum extent of a vibration or oscillation, measured from the position of equilibrium.

Timbre

The character or quality of a musical sound or voice as distinct from its pitch and intensity.

Frequency

The rate at which a vibration occurs that constitutes a wave, either in a material (as in sound waves), or in an electromagnetic field (as in radio waves and light), usually measured per second.

Pitch

The quality of a sound governed by the rate of vibrations producing it; the degree of highness or lowness of a tone.

Stereo Sound

The configuration of two or more different sound channels to give the perceptual impression of sound coming from various areas.

Temporal Lobe

The lobe of the brain involved in processing language comprehension, and emotion association.

Aphasias

Loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage.

Parietal Lobes

Part of brain for processing touch.

Vestibular Sense

Balance.

Touch

A collection of several senses, encompassing pressure, pain, cold, and warmth.

Pressure

The continuous physical force exerted on or against an object by something in contact with it.

Temperature

Degree of heat perceived by touch.

Pain

Sensory information from receptors when body tissue is damaged.

Phantom Limbs

A sensation experienced by someone who has had a limb amputated that the limb is still there.

Body-Integrity Identity Disorder

A proposed disorder in which otherwise healthy individuals perceive one or more of their limbs or organs as alien to the rest of their body.

Kinesthetic Sense

Located in muscles, joints, and tendons. Detects bodily posture, orientation, and movement of body parts relative to each other.

Gustation

Taste.

Taste Buds

The sensory parts of the tongue that facilitate the perception of taste.

Sweet, Salty, Bitter, Sour and Umami

The five basic tastes that human taste buds can distinguish.

Supertasters

Experience the sense of taste with far greater intensity than average.

Olfactory Bulb

Structure in the forebrain processing smell.

Anosmia

Loss of the sense of smell.

Flavor

Combination of taste and smell.

Lock and Key Theory

The idea that we have specific receptors for certain molecules in our olfactory system - 1,000 receptors for 10,000 smells.

Olfaction

Sense of smell.

Pheromones

Chemical signals released by organisms to communicate with others.

Vision

Constructs images of the world.

Rods

Photoreceptors concentrated in the periphery of the retina that are most active in dim illumination.

Cones

Visual receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and are responsible for color vision and fine detail; they are most sensitive in brightly lit conditions.

Wavelength

Determines color.

Occipital Lobe

Area of the brain highly involved with visual processing.

Gestalt Principles of Visual Organization

Five 'rules' of visual perception that emphasize organization and pattern recognition as enablers for visual perception of objects as whole, distinct, and singular.

Figure-Ground

Objects are seen as distinct from their surroundings (ground).

Proximity

Objects that are physically close together are grouped together.

Continuity

Objects that continue a pattern are grouped together.

Closure

The tendency to see a finished unit rather than disparate pieces.

Similarity

Similar objects are grouped together.

Size, Shape, Color and Brightness Constancy

We tend to perceive the environment as constant despite changes in size, shape, color, and brightness.

Cues to Depth Perception

Sensory information inputted to the brain from one eye (monocular) or both eyes (binocular) that helps determine depth and distance.

Retinal Disparity

Different images to fall on different eyes.

Convergence

Binocular depth cue in which the eyes turn inward (or converge) to fixate on an object.

Linear Perspective

Parallel lines converge, or angle toward one another, as they recede into the distance.

Interposition

Objects that obscure or overlap other objects are perceived as closer.

Relative Size

Close objects cast a larger retinal image than distant objects.

Texture Gradient

Nearby objects have a coarser and more distinct texture than distant ones.

Aerial Perspective

Distant objects appear hazy and blurred compared to close objects because of intervening atmospheric dust or haze.

Light and Shadow

Brighter objects are perceived as being closer than darker objects.

Afterimages

An illusion in which the visual of a perception of a stimulus remains as a retinal impression after the stimulus is removed from the field of vision.

"Magic Eye" Pictures

Two dimensional images that appear to become three dimensional if slowly moved away from the eyes.

Illusions

False or misleading perception shared by others in the same perceptual environment.

Vision Restoration

Surgery for the purpose of fixing the eyes, allowing for sight for blind person; does not always allow the person to see as a person with vision all their life would.

Visual Neglect

A typically hemispherical condition in which the eyes are functioning but one side of the visual field is completely ignored.

Red-Green Colorblindness

A common genetic condition in which a person's vision is deficient in the red-green part of the color spectrum.

Achromatopsia

Total colorblindness; seeing things only in black, grey, and white.

Visual Agnosia

A condition in which a person can see but cannot recognize or interpret visual information, due to a disorder in the parietal lobes.

Prosopagnosia

Faceblindness.

Synesthesia

The unusual pairing of one or more different sensations together, like seeing specific colors for numbers or feeling music in 3D space.

Subliminal Perception

The perception of stimuli presented below conscious awareness.

ESP

The perceptual, 'psychic,' abilities that supposedly go beyond the known senses (telepathy, clairvoyance, etc.).

Telepathy

The supposed communication of thoughts or ideas by means other than the known senses - mind reading.

Clairvoyance

The supposed faculty of perceiving things or events in the future or beyond normal sensory contact, like being able to see things happening on the other side of the world.

Precognition

The ability to see or know of events before they happen.

Psychokinesis

The ability to physically move objects with mental force on its own.