1. The brain senses the world indirectly because the sense organs convert stimulation in to the language of the nervous system: neural messages
2. The sense all operate in much the same way, but each extracts different information and sends it to its own specialized sensory processing region in the brain
3. Perception brings meaning to sensation, so perception produces an interpretation of the world, not a perfect representation of it
Terms : Hide Images
| 1954824748 | sensation | the process by which stimulation of a sensory receptor produces neural impulses that the brain interprets as a sound, a visual image, an odor, a taste, a pain, or other sensory images; represents the first series of steps in processing of incoming information | 0 | |
| 1954824749 | perception | a process that makes sensory patterns meaningful, draws heavily on memory, motivation, emotion, and other psychological processes | 1 | |
| 1954824750 | transduction | transformation of one form of energy into another - especially the transformation of stimulus information into nerve signals | 2 | |
| 1954824751 | sensory adaption | loss of responsiveness in receptor cells after stimulation has remained unchanged for a while | 3 | |
| 1954824752 | absolute threshold | the amount of stimulation necessary for stimulus to be detected, the presence of absence of stimulus is detected correctly half the time over many trials | 4 | |
| 1954824753 | difference threshold | the smallest amount by which a stimulus can be changed and the difference can be detected half the time | 5 | |
| 1954824754 | just noticeable difference (JND) | same as the difference threshold | 6 | |
| 1954824755 | weber's law | the size of JND is proportional to the intensity of the stimulus; the JND is large when the stimulus intensity is high and is small when the stimulus intensity is low | 7 | |
| 1954824756 | signal detection theory | explains how we detect "signals," consisting of stimulation affecting our eyes, ears, nose, skin, and other sense organs; sensation is a judgment the sensory system makes about incoming stimulation - pg. 116 | 8 | |
| 1954824757 | retina | the thin, light-sensitive layer at the back of the eyeball, contains millions of photoreceptors and other nerve cells - pg. 119 | 9 | |
| 1954824758 | rods | photoreceptors in the retina that are especially sensitive to dim light but not to colors - pg. 120 | 10 | |
| 1954824759 | cones | photoreceptors in the retina that are especially sensitive to colors but not to dim light - pg. 120 | 11 | |
| 1954824760 | fovea | the tiny area of sharpest vision in the retina - pg. 120 | 12 | |
| 1954824761 | optic nerve | the bundle of neurons that carries visual information from the retina to the brain - pg. 120 | 13 | |
| 1954824762 | blind spot | the point where the optic nerve exits the eye and where there are no photoreceptors. Any stimulus that falls on this area cannot be seen - pg. 121 | 14 | |
| 1954824763 | trichromatic theory | the idea that colors are sensed by three different types of cones sensitive to light in the red, blue, and green wavelengths; explains the earliest stage of color sensation - pg. 124 | 15 | |
| 1954824764 | opponent-process theory | the idea that cells in the visual system process colors in complementary pairs, such as red or green or as yellow or blue; explains color sensation from the bipolar cells onward in the visual system - pg. 124 | 16 | |
| 1954824765 | afterimages | sensations that linger after stimulus is removed - pg. 124 | 17 | |
| 1954824766 | color blindness | typically a genetic disorder that prevents an individual from discriminating certain colors - pg. 124 | 18 | |
| 1954824767 | frequency | the number of cycles completed by a wave in a given amount of time, usually a second - pg. 126 | 19 | |
| 1954824768 | amplitude | the physical strength of a wave, usually measured from peak (top) to valley (bottom) on a graph of the wave - pg. 126 | 20 | |
| 1954824769 | tympanic membrane | the eardrum - pg. 126 | 21 | |
| 1954824770 | cochlea | the primary organ of hearing; a coiled tube in the inner ear, where sound waves are transduced into nerve messages - pg. 126 | 22 | |
| 1954824771 | basilar membrane | a thin strip of tissue sensitive to vibrations in the cochlea; contains hair cells to vibrate, the associated neurons become excited. The sound waves are converted (transduced) into nerve activity - pg. 126 | 23 | |
| 1954824772 | pitch | a sensory characteristic of sound produced by the frequency of the sound wave - pg. 127 | 24 | |
| 1954824773 | loudness | a sensory characteristic of sound produced by the amplitude (intensity) of the sound wave -pg. 128 | 25 | |
| 1954824774 | timbre | the quality of a sound wave that derives from the wave's complexity - pg. 128 | 26 | |
| 1954824775 | vestibular sense | the sense of body orientation with respect to gravity, closely associated with the inner ear and carried to the brain on a branch of the auditory nerve - pg. 130 | 27 | |
| 1954824776 | kinesthetic sense | the sense of body position and movement of body parts relative to each other - pg. 130 | 28 | |
| 1954824777 | olfaction | the sense of smell - pg. 130 | 29 | |
| 1954824778 | pheromones | chemical signals released by organisms to communicate with other members of their species - pg. 130 | 30 | |
| 1954824779 | gustation | the sense of taste - pg. 131 | 31 | |
| 1954824780 | gate-control theory | an explanation for pain control that proposes we have a neural "gate" that can, under some circumstances, block incoming pain signals - pg. 133 | 32 | |
| 1954824781 | feature detectors | cells in the cortex that specialize in extracting certain features of a stimulus - pg. 135 | 33 | |
| 1954824782 | bottom-up processing | perceptual analysis that emphasizes characteristics of the stimulus, rather than our concepts and expectations - pg. 136 | 34 | |
| 1954824783 | top-down processing | perceptual analysis that emphasizes the perceiver's expectations, concept memories, and other cognitive factors, rather than being driven by the characteristics of the stimulus - pg. 136 | 35 | |
| 1954824784 | laws of similarity | the gestalt principle that we tend to group similar objects together in our perceptions - pg. 144 | 36 | |
| 1954824785 | laws of proximity | the gestalt principle that we tend to group objects together when they are near each other; "nearness" - pg. 144 | 37 | |
| 1954824786 | laws of continuity | the gestalt principle that we prefer perceptions of connected and continuous figures of connected and continuous figures to disconnected and disjointed ones - pg. 144 | 38 | |
| 1954824787 | monocular cues | information about depth that relies on the input of just one eye (relative size, light and shadow, interposition, relative motion, atmospheric perspective) - pg. 146 | 39 | |
| 1954824788 | Binocula Cues | information taken in by both eyes that aids in depth perception, including binocular coverage and retinal disparity | 40 |
