Sensation: the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment

Sensory receptors: sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli

Perception: the process by which our brain organizes and interprets sensory information, enabling us to recognize objects and events as meaningful

Bottom up processing: information processing that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information

Top-down processing: information processing guided by higher level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations

Transduction: conversion of one form of energy into another, in sensation, the transforming of physical energy, such as sights, sounds and smells, into neural impulses our brain can interpret

Absolute threshold: the minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time

Signal detection theory: predicts how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus amid background stimulation. Assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness

Subliminal: below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness

Difference threshold: the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time, We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference

Weber's law: the principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage

Sensory adaptation: diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation

Perceptual set: a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another

Wavelength: the distance from the peak of one light wave or sound wave to the peak of the next

Hue: the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light

Intensity: the amount of energy in a light wave or sound wave, which influences what we perceive as brightness or loudness, determined by wave amplitude

Retina: the light-sensitive back inner surface of the eye containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information

Accommodation: the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina

Rods: retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray, and are sensitive to movement, necessary for peripheral and twilight vision

Cones: retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. Cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations

Optic nerve; The nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.

Blind spot: the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a blind spot because no receptor cells are located there

Fovea: the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster

Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory: the theory that the retina contains three different types of 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

Opponent-process-theory: the theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, blue-yellow, white-black) enable color vision

Feature detectors: nerve cells in the brain's visual cortex that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement

Parallel Processing: Processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously

Gestalt: an organized whole

Figure-ground: the organization of the visual field into objects that stand out from their surroundings

Grouping: the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups

Depth perception: the ability to see objects in three dimensions, although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance

Visual cliff: a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals

Binocular cues: a depth cue such as retinal disparity that depends on the use of two eyes

Retinal disparity: a binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing retinal images from the two eyes, the brain computers distance–the greater the disparity between the two images, the closer the object

Monocular cue: a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone

Phi phenomenon: an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession

Perceptual constancy: perceiving objects as unchanging(having consistent color, brightness, shape and size) even as illumination and retinal images change.

Perceptual adaptation: the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field

Audition: the sense or act or hearing

Frequency (measured in hertz): the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time

Pitch: a tone's experienced highness or lowness

Middle ear: the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window

Cochlea: a coiled, bony, fluid filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger neural impulses

Inner ear: the innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs

Sensorineural hearing loss: the most common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerve, also called nerve deafness

Conduction hearing loss: the less common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

Cochlear implant: a device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea

Place theory (coding): in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated

Frequency theory (temporal coding): in hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch

Gate control theory: the theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological gate that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain. The gate is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain

Hypnosis: a social interaction in which one person suggests to another that certain perceptions, feelings, thoughts, or behaviors will spontaneously occur

Dissociation: a split in consciousness, which allows some thoughts and behaviors to occur simultaneously with others

Posthypnotic suggestions: a suggestion, made during a hypnosis session, to be carried out after the subject is no longer hypnotized

Gustation: sense of taste

Olfaction: sense of smell

Kinesthesia: our movement sense— our system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts

Vestibular sense: our balance sense— our sense of body movement and position that enables our sense of balance

Sensory interaction: the principle that one sense can influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste

Embodied cognition: the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgements

Extrasensory perception: the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition

Parapsychology: the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis

Memory: The persistence of learning over time through the encoding, storage, and retrieval of info

Recall: a measure of memory in which the person must retrieve info learned earlier (fill in the blank)

Recognition: Identifying items previously learned (multiple choice)

Relearning: Learning something more quickly when you learn it a second or later time

Encode: the process of getting info into the memory system (ex: extracting meaning)

Store: retention of encoded information

Retrieve: the process of getting info out of memory storage

Parallel processing: processing multiple aspects of a stimulus or problem simultaneously

Sensory memory: the immediate, every brief recording of sensory info in the memory system

Short term memory: briefly activated memory of a few items that is later stored or forgotten

Long -term memory: the relatively permanent and limitless archive of the memory systems, Includes knowledge, skills, and experiences

Working memory: a newer understanding of short term memory conscious, active processing of both incoming sensory info and info retrieved from long-term memory

Explicit (declarative) memories: the retention of facts and experiences that we can consciously know and declare

Effortful processing: encoding that requires attention and conscious effort

Automatic processing: unconscious encoding of incidental information, such as space, time, and frequency, and of familiar or well-learned info such as sounds, smells, and word definitions

Implicit (nondeclarative) memories: retention of learned skills or classically conditioned associations independent of conscious recollection

Iconic memory: a momentary sensory memory of visual stimuli; a photographic or picture-image memory lasting no more than a few tenths of a second

Echoic memory: a momentary sensory memory of auditory stimuli; if attention is elsewhere, sounds and words can still be recalled within 3 to 4 seconds

Chunking: organizing items into familiar, manageable units; often occurs automatically

Mnemonics: memory aids, especially those techniques that use vivid imagery and organizational devices

Spacing effect: the tendency for distributed study or practice to yield better long-term retention than is achieved through massed study or practice

Testing effect: enhanced memory after retrieving rather than simply rereading, information

Shallow processing: encoding on a basic level, based on the structure or appearance of words

Deep processing: encoding semantically, based on the meaning of the words; tends to yield the best retention

Semantic: explicit memory of facts and general knowledge

Episodic: explicit memory of personally experienced events

Hippocampus: a neural center located in the limbic system that helps process explicit(conscious) memories of facts and events for storage

Memory consolidation: the neural storage of a long-term memory

Flashbulb memories: a clear memory of an emotionally significant moment or event

Long-term potentiation: an increase in a nerve cell’s firing potential after brief, rapid stimulation; a neural basis for learning and memory

Priming: the activation, often unconsciously of certain association, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or response

Encoding specificity principle: the idea that cues and contexts specific to a particular memory will be most effective in helping us recall it

Serial position effect: our tendency to recall best the last (recency effect) and first (primacy effect) items in a list

Mood congruent: the tendency to recall experiences that are consistent with one’s current good or bad mood

Anterograde amnesia: an inability to form new memories

Retrograde amnesia: an inability to remember information from one's past

Proactive interference: the forward-acting disruptive effect of older learning on the recall of new information

Retroactive interference: the backward-acting disruptive effect of newer learning on the recall of old information

Repress: in psychoanalytic theory: the basic defense mechanism that banishes from consciousness anxiety arousing thoughts, feelings, and memories

Reconsolidation: a process in which previously stored memories, when retrieved are potentially altered before being stored again

Misinformation effect: occurs when a memory has been corrupted by misleading information

Source amnesia (source misattribution): faulty memory for how, when, or where information was learned or imagined

Déjà vu: eerie sense of "I've experienced this before" cues from the current situation may unconsciously trigger retrieval of an earlier experience

Cognition: all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering adn communicating

Metacognition: cognition about our cognition; keeping track of and evaluating our mental processes

Concepts: a mental grouping of similar objects, events, ideas, or people

Prototype: a mental image or best example of a category. Matching new items to a prototype provides a quick and easy method for sorting items into categories(as when comparing feathered creatures to a prototypical bird, such as a crow

Algorithms: A methodical, logical rule or procedure that guarantees solving a particular problem

Heuristics: a simple thinking strategy–a mental shortcut– that often allows us to make judgements and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than an algorithm

Insight: a sudden realization of a problem's solution; contrast with strategy-based solutions

Confirmation bias: a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence

Fixation: the inability to see a problem from a new perspective; an obstacle to problem solving

Intuition: an effortless, immediate automatic feeling or thought, as contrasted with explicit, conscious reasoning

Representativeness heuristic: judging the likelihood of events in terms of how well they seem to represent, or match, particular prototypes; may lead us to ignore other relevant information

Availability heuristic: judging the likelihood of events based on their availability in memory; if instances come readily to mind (perhaps because of their vividness), we presume such events are common

Overconfidence: the tendency to be more confident than correct–to overestimate the accuracy of our beliefs and judgements

Belief perseverance: the persistence of one's initial conceptions even after the basis on which they were formed has been discredited

Framing: the way an issue is posed; how an issue is framed can significantly affect decisions and judgements

Nudge: framing choices in a way that encourages people to make beneficial decisions

Creativity: the ability to produce new and valuable ideas

Convergent thinking: narrowing the available problem solutions to determines the single best solution

Divergent thinking: expanding the number of possible problem solutions; creative thinking that diverges in different directions

Language: our spoken, written or signed words, and the ways we combine them to communicate meaning

Phonemes: in a language, the smallest distinctive sound unit

Morphemes: in a language, the smallest unit that carries meaning; may be a word or part of a word

Grammar: a language's set of rules that enable people to communicate with and understand others. Semantics in the language's set of rules for deriving meanings form sounds and syntax is its set of rules for combining words into grammatically sensible sentences

Babbling stage: the stage in speech development, beginning around 4 months, during which an infant spontaneously uttered various sounds that are not all related to the household language

One-word stage: the stage in speech development form about age 1 to 2, during which child speaks mostly in single worlds

Two-word stage: the stage in speech development, beginning about age 2, during which a child speaks mostly in two word sentences

Telegraphic speech: the early speech stage in which a child speaks like a telegram –"go car"-- using mostly nouns and verbs

Aphasia: impairment of language, usually caused by left hemisphere damage either to Broca's area (impairing speaking) or to Wernicke's area (impairing understanding)

Broca's area: a frontal lobe brain area, usually in the left hemisphere, that helps control language expression by directing muscle movements involving speech

Wernicke's area: a brain area usually in the left temporal lobe, involved in language comprehension and expression

Linguistic determinism: whorf's hypothesis that language determines the way we think

Linguistic relativism: the idea that language influences the way we think

Developmental psychology: Studies physical, cognitive, and social development throughout the lifespan

Cross-sectional studies: research that compares people of different ages at the same point in time

Longitudinal studies: Research that follows and retests the same people over time

Zygote: the fertilized egg; it enters a 2-week period of rapid cell division and develops into an embryo

Embryo: the developing human organism from about 2 weeks after fertilization throughout the second month

Fetus: The developing human organism from 9 weeks after conception to birth

Teratogens: agents, such as chemicals and viruses that can reach the embryo or fetus during prenatal development and cause harm

Fetal alcohol syndrome: physical and cognitive abnormalities in children caused by a pregnant woman's heavy drinking. In severe cases, signs include a small, out-of-proportion head and abnormal facial features

Habituation: decreasing responsiveness with repeated stimulation, As infants gain familiarity with repeated exposure to a stimulus, their interest wanes and they look away sooner

Maturation: biological growth processes that enable orderly changes in behavior, relatively uninfluenced by experience

Critical period: an optimal period early in the life of an organism when exposure to certain stimuli or experiences produces normal development

Cognition: all the mental activities associated with thinking, knowing, remembering, and communicating

Schemas: a concept or framework that organizes and interprets information

Assimilate: interpreting our new experiences in terms of our existing schemas

Accommodate: adapting our current schemas to incorporate new information

Sensorimotor stage: in Piaget's theory, the stage (from birth to nearly two years of age) at which infants know the world mostly in terms of their sensory impressions and motor activities

Object permanence: the awareness that things continue to exist even when not perceived

Egocentric: in Piaget's theory, the preoperational child's difficulty taking another's point of view

Concrete operational stage: In Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (from about 7-11 years of age) at which children gain the mental operations that enable them to think logically about concrete events

Formal operational: in Piaget's theory, the stage of cognitive development (normally beginning about age 12) at which people begin to think logically about abstract concepts

Scaffold: in Vygotsky's theory, a framework that offers children temporary support at they develop higher levels of thinking

Theory of mind: people's ideas about their own and other's mental states–about their feelings, perceptions, and thoughts, and the behaviors these might predict

Stranger anxiety: the fear of strangers that infants commonly display, beginning by about 8 months of age

Attachment: an emotional tie with others; shown in young children by their seeking closeness to caregivers and showing distress on separation

Imprinting: the process by which certain animals form strong attachments during early life

Temperament: a person's characteristic emotional reactivity and intensity

Basic trust: according to erik erikson, a sense that the world is predictable and trustworthy; said to be formed during infancy by appropriate experiences with responsive caregivers

Authoritarian parenting: coercive; impose rules and expect obedience

Permissive parenting: unrestrained; make few demands, set few limits, and use little punishment

Neglectful parenting: uninvolved; neither demanding nor responsive

Authoritative parenting: confrontive; both demanding and responsive

Adolescence: the transition period from childhood to adulthood, extending from puberty to independence

Puberty: the period of sexual maturation, when a person usually becomes capable of reproducing

Identity: our sense of self; according to Erikson, the adolescent;s task is to solidify a sense of self by testing and integrating various roles

Social identity: the “we” aspect of our self concept; the part of our answer to “who am I?” that comes from our group memberships

Intimacy: in Erikson’s theory, the ability to form close, loving relationships; a primary developmental task in young adulthood

Emerging adulthood: a period from about age 18 to mid-twenties when many in western cultures are no longer adolescents but have not yet achieved full independence as adults

Kohlberg’s preconventional morality: Before age 9; self-interest; obey rules to avoid punishment or gain concrete rewards

Kohlberg’s conventional morality: Early adolescence; uphold laws and rules to gain social approval or maintain social behavior

Kohlberg’s Postconventional Morality: adolescence and beyond; actions reflect belief in basic rights and self-defined ethical principles

Erikson’s Trust vs Mistrust: Infancy; develop trust if basic needs are met

Erikson’s Autonomy vs shame and doubt: Toddlerhood; exercise will and learn to do things, or doubt abilities

Erikson’s Initiative vs guilt: Preschool; learn to initiate tasks/plans, or feel guilty about efforts to be independent

Erikson’s competence vs inferiority: Elementary school; learn to do do tasks, or feel inferior

Erikson’s identity vs role confusion: Adolescence; test different roles then form single identity, or else confusion about self

Erikson’s Intimacy vs isolation: Young adulthood; learn to form relationships and gain capacity for intimate love, or social isolation

Generativity vs stagnation: Middle adulthood, Discover a sense for contributing to world (through family or work), or else lack of purpose

Integrity vs despair: Late adulthood; reflecting on lives; feel accomplished/satisfied, or failure

Menopause: the time of natural cessation of menstruation; also refers to the biological changes a woman experiences as her ability to reproduce declines

Social clock: the culturally preferred timing of social events such as marriage, parenthood, and retirement