Sensation and Perception

These flashcards cover key concepts in sensation and perception as taught in the psychology lecture.

Empiricist View

The perspective that senses are the source of all knowledge, associated with John Locke.

Nativist View

The belief that knowledge is innate and perceivers play an active role in understanding stimuli, associated with Emmanuel Kant.

Sensation

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

Perception

The process of organizing and interpreting sensory information to recognize meaningful objects and events.

Transduction

The transformation of sensory cell stimulation into neural impulses.

Bottom-up processing

Processing sensory information by assembling and integrating it.

Top-down processing

Interpreting sensory information using models, ideas, and expectations.

Absolute Threshold

The minimum intensity necessary to detect a stimulus 50% of the time.

Difference Threshold

The minimum amount of change in stimulus intensity needed to notice a difference (just noticeable difference, jnd).

Weber’s Law

The principle that the amount of change needed to detect a difference is a constant fraction of the original stimulus.

Signal Detection Theory

A theory describing the sensory and decision-making processes influenced by stimulus intensity and mental processes.

Optic Chiasm

The point where the optic nerve fibers from each eye cross over to the opposite side of the brain.

Trichromatic Theory

The theory that three types of cones in the retina are responsible for color perception, sensitive to red, green, and blue.

Opponent-Process Theory

Theory stating that color perception is controlled by pairs of opponent colors, where perceiving one color inhibits the perception of the other.

Gestalt Principles

Rules describing how our brains organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes.

Figure-Ground Organization

The perceptual organization of stimuli into a central object (figure) and its surrounding context (ground).