5 AP Psychology Unit 4 Vocab

7. Change Blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment

6. Inattentional Blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere.

57. Phi Phenomenon

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

55. Retinal Disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance - the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object.

38. Cochlea

a coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sound waves trigger nerve impulses.

44. Cochlea Implant

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

53. Visual Cliff

a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals.

61. Perceptual Set

a mental disposition to perceive one thing and not another.

21. Iris

a ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening.

10. Signal Detection Theory

a theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise). Assumes there is no absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and altertness.

36. Pitch

a tone's experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency.

49. Gestalt

an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

3. Bottom-up Processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information.

11. Subliminal

below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness.

16. Transduction

conversion of one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells into neural impulses our brains can interpret.

56. Monocular Cues

depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone.

54. Binocular Cues

depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes.

15. Sensory Adaptations

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation.

43. Sensorineural Hearing Loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness.

42. Conduction Hearing Loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea. Problems with the eardrum or three bones of the middle ear.

40. Place Theory

in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated.

41. Frequency Theory

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.

60. Perceptual Adaptation

in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field.

4. Top-Down Processing

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

30. Feature Detectors

nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement.

59. Color Constancy

perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object.

58. Perceptual Constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent shapes, size, lightness, and color) even as illumination and retinal images change.

34. Audition

the sense or act of hearing.

26. Cones

retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. The cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations.

25. Rods

retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond.

52. 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.

12. Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response.

20. Pupil

the adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which lights enters.

19. Intensity

the amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, as determined by the wave's amplitude.

29. Fovea

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

37. Middle Ear

the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window.

62.Extrasensory Perception (ESP)

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

18. Hue

the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth.

17. Wavelength

the distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next. Electromagnetic wavelengths vary from the short blips of comic rays to the long pulses of radio transmission.

5. Selective Attention

the focusing of conscious awareness on a particular stimulus.

39. Inner Ear

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

23. Retina

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

13. Difference Threshold

the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (jnd).

9. Absolute Threshold

the minimum stimulation necessary to detect a particular stimulus 50% of the time.

27. Optic Nerve

the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.

35. Frequency

the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time (i.e. per second).

50. Figure-Ground

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).

51. Grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups.

28. Blind Spot

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

48. Sensory Interaction

the principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste.

14. Weber's Law

the principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant percentage (rather than a constant amount).

1. Sensation

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

24. Accommodation

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

2. Perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

31. Parallel Processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision. Contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving.

46. Vestibular Sense

the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance.

63. Parapyschology

the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis.

8. Psychophysics

the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them.

45. Kinethesis

the system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts.

33. Opponent-Process Theory

the theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision. For example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red; others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green.

32. Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory

the theory that the retina contains three different 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.

47. 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.

22. Lens

the transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus the images on the retina.