| A | B |
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| Accommodation | Process of changing curvature of lens to focus light rays on the retina. Nearsighted--too much curvature of lens/cornea focuses images before retina. Farsighted--too little curvature of lens/cornea focuses images after (behind) retina, so distant objects are seen better. |
| Attention | The set of processes by which you choose from among the various stimuli bombarding your senses at any instant, allowing some to be further processed by your senses and brain. Selective attention--focused awareness of only a limited aspect of all you are capable of experiencing. |
| Audition | The sense of hearing. Loudness--determined by amplitude of sound wave; higher amplitude is louder. Pitch--highness or lowness of sound determined by frequency and wavelength; the higher the frequency and shorter the wavelength, the higher the pitch. |
| Auditory Pathway Through the Brain | Axons of neurons in the cochlea converge (auditory nerve) transmitting sound messages through the medulla, pons, and thalamus to the auditory cortex of the temporal lobes. Neurons crisscross in the medulla and pons; contralateral input dominates. |
| Blind spot | Part of retina without any rods or cones ● Where the optic nerve exits the retina. The part of an image that falls in that area of the retina will be missing. |
| Body Senses | Kinesthesis--provides information about the position and movement of individual body parts with receptors in muscles, tendons, and joints. Vestibular sense--sense of equilibrium with hairlike receptors in semicircular canals and vestibular sac in the inner ear. |
| Bottom-Up Processing | Information processing that begins with sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information to construct perceptions. Is data driven |
| Dark Adaptation | Increased visual sensitivity that gradually develops when it gets dark. Results from shift from predominantly cone vision to predominantly rod vision. Area cannot be completely dark; enough light energy is needed to stimulate rods. |
| Deafness | Inability to hear. Conduction deafness--results when eardrum is punctured or ossicles (bones) cannot vibrate; hearing aids can help. Sensorineural (nerve) deafness--results from damage to cochlea hair cells, auditory neurons; cochlea implants can help. |
| Depth Perception | Ability to judge the distance of objects. Monocular cues--clues about distance based on the image of 1 eye; include overlap, relative size and clarity, texture gradient, and linear perspective. Binocular cues--clues about distance requiring 2 eyes; retinal disparity and convergence. |
| ESP (Extrasensory Perception) | Controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input. Parapsychology--study of paranormal events that investigates claims of ESP, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. |
| Gate Control Theory of Pain | Pain messages pass through a gate in the spinal cord on their route to the brain. Gate is opened by small fibers that carry pain signals; maintained by anxiety, depression, and focusing on the pain. Closed by neural activity of larger fibers, other signals, or endorphins. |
| Gestalt Organizing Principles | The whole is different from and can be greater than the sum of its parts ● Law of Pragnanz or good form--we organize patterns in the simplest way possible; other organizing principles: proximity, closure, similarity, continuity, phi phenomenon, figure-ground |
| Gustation (Taste) | Chemical sense of taste with receptor cells in taste buds in fungiform papillae on the tongue, roof of the mouth, and in the throat; molecules must dissolve to be sensed. 5 basic tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami; flavor is interaction of sensations of taste, odor, temperature, etc. |
| Olfaction (Sense of Smell) | Chemical sense with receptors in a mucous membrane (olfactory epithelium) on roof of nasal cavity; molecules must reach membrane and dissolve to be sensed; olfactory receptors synapse immediately with neurons of olfactory bulbs in brain; no synapses with thalamus. |
| Opponent-Process Theory | Hering's theory that color vision results from opposing retinal processes for red-green, yellow-blue, and white-black. Some retinal cells are stimulated by one of a pair and inhibited by the other. Accounts for afterimages. Processing occurs in thalamus. |
| Optical or Visual Illusions | Discrepancies between the appearance of a visual stimulus and its physical reality. Example: reversible figures, illusory contours, the Muller-Lyer illusion, Ponzo illusion, moon illusion. |
| Parallel Processing | Simultaneous processing of stimulus elements; for vision, stimulus elements include color, contours, and orientation. Feature detectors--specific neurons that respond only to certain stimulus elements; Hubel and Weisel won the Nobel prize for finding this. |
| Pathway Through Ear | Mechanical vibrations pass through the auditory canal to the vibrating eardrum to vibrating middle ear bones (hammer, anvil, stirrup) to the cochlea of the inner ear. Hair cells on the basilar membrane of the cochlea transduce mechanical energy to electrochemical neural impulses. |
| Perception | The process of selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations, enabling you to recognize meaningful objects and events. |
| Perceptual Constancy | Perceiving an object as unchanging even when the immediate sensation of the object changes. Example: size constancy, shape constancy, and brightness constancy. |
| Photoreceptors | Modified neurons (rods and cones) in the retina that transduce light energy to electrochemical energy of neural impulses. Rods--detect black, white, and gray colors as well as movement; necessary for vision in dim light and peripheral vision. Cones--detect color and fine detail in light; are most concentrated at fovea. |
| Schema | Concepts or frameworks that organize and interpret information. Framework of basic ideas and preconceptions about people, objects, and events based on past experience in long-term memory. |
| Sensation | The process by which you detect physical energy from your environment and encode it as neural signals. |
| Sensory Adaption | Temporary decrease in sensitivity to a stimulus that occurs when stimulation is unchanging. Also called sensory adaption. |
| Signal Detection Theory | Maintains that minimum threshold varies with fatigue, attention, expectations, motivation, emotional distress, and from one person to another. |
| Skin Sensation Pathway Through NS | Afferent neurons carry sensory information to the spinal cord. Interneurons send it to the medulla where nerves crisscross to the thalamus, arriving at opposite sides of your somatosensory cortex at the front of the parietal lobes. |
| Somatosensation (Tactile Sensations) | 4 classes of tactile sensations: touch/pressure, warmth, cold, pain. Transduction of mechanical energy of touch/pressure and of heat energy of warmth and cold occurs at sensory receptors just below skin's surface. |
| Stimulus | A change in the environment that can be detected by sensory receptors. A change in the environment that elicits (brings about) a response. |
| Subliminal Stimulation | Receiving messages below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness. |
| Theories of Audition | Place theory--position on basilar membrane where waves peak, depends on frequency of tone; accounts for high pitch. Frequency theory--rate of neural impulses of auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone to sense pitch. Accounts for low pitch. |
| Threshold | Absolute threshold--the weakest level of a stimulus detected by sensory receptors. Difference threshold is the minimum difference between any 2 stimuli that a person can detect 50% of the time. JND or just noticeable difference--experience of the difference threshold. |
| Timbre | Quality of a sound determined by the purity of a waveform. What makes a note of the same pitch and loudness sound different on different musical instruments. |
| Top-Down Processing | Information processing guided by your preexisting knowledge or expectations to construct perceptions. Is concept driven. |
| Transduction | Transformation of stimulus energy to the electrochemical energy of neural impulses. Example: Light energy is transduced by eyes, mechanical energy by ears and skin, chemical energy by tongue and nose. |
| Trichromatic Theory | Young and Helmholtz's theory that 3 types of cones in retina are differentially sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Each color you see results from a specific ratio of activation among the 3 types of cones. |
| Visual Capture | Vision usually dominates when there is a conflict among senses. Example: Sound seems to come from mouths of characters on the movie screen rather than speakers in the walls. |
| Visual Pathway Through Eye | Rays of light from an object pass from the object through the cornea, aqueous humor, pupil, lens, and vitreous humor before forming an image on retina. Transparent curved cornea bends rays. Pupil (opening) is smaller in bright light. Lens focuses rays into image on retina. |
| Visual Pathway to Brain | Rods and cones synapse with bipolar cells that synapse with ganglion cells in the retina. Ganglion cell axons form optic nerve. Half of axons from each eye crisscross at the optic chiasm; half of axons from each eye send impulses through the thalamus to each occipital lobe of the cerebral cortex. |
| Weber's Law | Difference thresholds increase in proportion to the size of the stimulus. A greater change in a stimulus is necessary in order for it to be discerned if the original stimulus is large; more weight needs to be added to something heavy than to something light for it to be noticed. |
