CPSY 4341 Exam 1 Vocabulary

Vocabulary from CPSY 4341 Exam 1 Study Guide for Spring 2025

Sensation

physical detection of stimuli through the sensory registers

Audition

the act of hearing a sound in response to acoustic waves or mechanical vibrations acting on a body

Haptic

sensory process of gaining information about objects through touch, involving the sensing of movement, position, and information through the skin

Wavelength

For light energy, the distance between one peak of a light wave and the next peak

Transduction

converting stim energy into neural activity

Positive Afterimage

exact, as is; colors of the original stimulus linger, qualities of the original stimulus linger

Difference Threshold

the minimum difference that must exist between two stimuli before we can actually tell the difference between them

Habituation

(aka adaptation) a decline in response to a stimuli due to repeated presentations of stimuli at neural level; 50% reduction in looking time (or reaction)

Frontal Lobe

Receiving signals from all of the senses, the frontal lobe plays an important role in perceptions that involve the coordination of information received through two or more senses. It also serves functions such as language, thought, memory, and motor functioning

Cerebral Cortex

The 2-mm-thick layer that covers the surface of the brain and contains the machinery for creating perception, as well as for other functions, such as language, memory, and thinking

Conditioning

learning to repeat response; operant conditioning is when learning is supported by reinforcement

IV (Independent Variable)

variable you manipulate, control, or vary in an experimental study to explore its effects

Sucking

interruption = sign of interest, continued uninterruption = sign of habituation; influences by sensory stimulation (gustation, olfactory, vestibular, visual), has a sound when infant is sucking strongly

Stimulus

an energy change (e.g., light or sound) which is registered by the senses (e.g., vision, hearing, taste, etc.) and constitutes the basis for perception

Traversing

traveling across or through

Multimodal

intersensory, stimulus is presented in two or more sensory modalities

Fine Motor

finger grasping, object manipulation

Sclera

white part of eye, provides protection and structure,

Lens

transparent, shape changing convex structure that focuses images on retina; must accommodate to focus on specific objects, ciliary muscles relax for object in distance, ciliary muscles constrict and thicken for objects that are close

Fovea

spot in center of the retina; 0.3 mm diameter rod-free area with very thin, densely packed cones

Visual Cortex

located in the occipital lobe of both hemispheres and contains the many specialized cells for visual perception

Acuity

how clearly or sharply you see

Receptor

specialized parts of sensory nerve cells that enable people to perceive sensation from their environment

Gustation

starts with a motivated human searching for and detecting a food item usually via visual and olfactory properties of the food

Kinesthetic

awareness of how parts of the body are moving

Purity

one moral concept often discussed when talking about morality-it has been suggested to capture moral differences across politics and to demonstrate the evolutionary roots of morality, especially the role of disgust in moral judgment

Adaptation

brain's ability to adjust and adapt to changes in sensory input over time

Bottom Up

identifying the stimulus by analyzing the information available in the external stimulus; begins at the receptor level and continues to ‘higher brain centers’

Weber’s Law

size of just noticeable difference is a constant proportion of original stimulus value

Occipital Lobe

A lobe at the back of the cortex that is the site of the cortical receiving area for vision

Recognition

relies on perception to associate new stimuli with previously encountered information

Parent Report

parents or guardians complete surveys or questionnaires answers questions about parent or child

Blinking

adults: 12-17 blinks/minute, newborns: 2-3 blinks/minute, regulated by dopamine, blink less when attending more

DV (Dependent Variable)

a variable that changes in response to an independent variable; the outcome of an experiment that's being measured 

HR

heart rate

Modality

the means through which information is extracted from the environment

Selective Attention

Occurs when a person selectively focuses attention on a specific location or stimulus property

Exploratory

focusing attention on the object perceived

Cornea

specialized transparent portion of sclera through which light enters

Retina

layers containing two types of photoreceptors

Blind Spot

where optic nerve connects to the eye; no rods nor cones, you do not notice it (other eye makes up for it), each eye sends its own data to your brain, brain fills in what is missing

Divergence

to turn the eyes outward to look at a distant object; ability to turn the two eyes outwards to look into the distance, accommodation is inhibited and pupils slightly dilate

Snellen Chart

used globally to measure visual acuity

Stimulus

an energy change (e.g., light or sound) which is registered by the senses

Olfactory

a process that starts in the nose with the stimulation of olfactory sensory neurons and terminates in higher cerebral centers which, when activated, make us consciously aware of an odor

Vestibular

functions to detect the position and movement of our head in space. This allows for the coordination of eye movements, posture, and equilibrium. The vestibular apparatus found in the inner ear helps to accomplish this task by sending afferent nerve signals from its individual components

Frequency

the number of complete wavelengths (also known as cycles) that occur within a specific time

Perception

process of organizing, interpreting, and experiencing sensations

Top Down

identifying a stimulus by using the knowledge we already have about environment or situation; built-in, based on previous experiences, allows us to form expectations about what we should perceive, info processing starts in the ‘higher brain centers’ and then proceeds to the receptors

Signal Detection

relates to the idea that the intensity of the stimuli and the psychological and physical state of the person contribute to whether or not the person is able to detect the stimuli

Temporal Lobe

A lobe on the side of the cortex that is the site of the cortical receiving area for hearing and the termination point for the ventral, or what, stream for visual processing. A number of areas in the temporal lobe, such as the fusiform face area and the extrastriate body area, serve functions related to perceiving and recognizing objects

Representation

the neuropsychology of how human beings transform sensory stimuli into more abstract levels of perceptual experience

Self-Report

data is analyzed by themselves or in combination with behavioral or psychophysical data

Pupillary Light Reflex

involuntary reflex, can be a measure of interest, individual differences can occur; fixed dilated pupils are usually indicative of a stroke, injury, or some neurological damage, well developed by 35 weeks gestation

Head Turn

requiring the infants to turn their head to one side in response to one particular sound, and to the other side in response to a second particular sound

Orienting Response

maximizes attention to new stimulus or event; momentary cessation of ongoing behavior, orienting of receptors to new stimulus or event, physiological changes (HR deceleration)

Amodal

information comes from what is presented across modalities, information is not specific to a particular sense

Unimodal

the stimulus is presented in a one sense modality; see an object, hear a sound

Affordance

relationship between object and person

Iris

pigmented muscle, gives eye its color, regulates size of pupil, controls amount of light entering the eye

Rod

located in the periphery; 120 million, sensitive, night, low light vision

Receptive Field

A neuron’s receptive field is the area on the receptor surface (the retina for vision; the skin for touch) that, when stimulated, affects the firing of that neuron

Convergence

to look at a close object or an object as it is moving closer, your eyes must rotate inward

Teller Card

babies look at things they can see; black and white high contrast lines are more interesting than a grey blob

Vision

human eye can detect a stimulus between 54 and 148 photons

Touch

varies by part of the body (finger tips vs neck); gender differences

Intensity

the strength or force of a stimulus

Pitch

the listening experience that varies in a rise-and-fall sense with the frequency of a sound

Negative Afterimage

stimulus is inverted by the sensory system

Absolute Threshold

point at which a stimuli can be detected 50% of the time; minimum stimulus (such as light, vibration, etc.) needed for detection

Sensory Adaptation

decline in receptor activity when stimuli are unchanging

Parietal Lobe

A lobe at the top of the cortex that is the site of the cortical receiving area for touch and is the termination point of the dorsal (where or how) stream for visual processing

Psychophysics

physics and mathematical relationship between physical energy and psychological experience

VOE

based on the idea that infants will show surprise when witnessing an impossible event

Preference

head turn, eye fixation, eye gaze, visual discrimination of one object compared to the other

Eye Gaze

involves not only visual processing, but also higher-level cognition such as attentional control and self-referential processing

Discriminative Stiumulus

a specific environmental cue or event that signals the availability of reinforcement for a particular behavior

Intersensory Redundancy

spatially coordinated and concurrent presentation of the same information (e.g., rate, rhythm, intensity) across two or more sense modalities

Gross Motor

large limb, whole body

Photoreceptor

The receptors for vision

Pupil

opening in iris

Cone

6-7 million, concentrated in fovea/macula; color vision, fine detail, transduce light into electrochemical energy

Optic Chiaism

junction of the two optic nerves where fibers from the nasal sides of the two retinas cross; x-shaped structure, nerve fibers from the peripheral sides of the two retinas do not cross to the other side of the brain, the left half of the world is represented in the right hemisphere of the brain, vice versa

Accommodation

ability to adjust focus of the eyes due to distance between the individual and object of focus

ERP (Event Related Potential)

measured by cap with recording nodes placed on baby’s head; electrodes in cap record tiny electrical currents on scalp of infant as the infant responds to presentation of stimulus (such as sound or image)