Sensation & Perception

The perceptual experience of one sense that is evoked by another sense.

Simple stimulation of a sense organ.

The organization, identification and interpretation of a sensation in order to form a mental representation.

What takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into encoded neural signals sent to the central nervous system.

Methods that measure the strength of a stimulus and the observer's sensitivity to that stimulus.

The minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus.

The minimal change in a stimulus that can just barely be detected.

The just noticeable difference of a stimulus is a constant proportion despite variations in intensity.

An observation that the response to a stimulus depends on both a person's sensitivity to the stimulus in the presence of noise and on a person's response criterion.

Sensitivity to prolonged stimulation tends to decline over time as an organism adapts to current conditions.

The ability to see fine detail.

Light sensitive tissue lining the back of the eyeball.

The process by which the eye maintains a clear image on the retina.

Photoreceptors that detect color, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail.

Photoreceptors that become active under low-light conditions for night vision.

An area of the retina where vision is clearest and there are no rods at all.

A location in the visual field that produces no sensation on the retina because the corresponding area of the retina contains neither rods nor cones and therefore has no mechanism to sense light.

The region of the sensory surface that, when stimulated, causes a change in the firing rate of that neuron.

The pattern of responding across the three types of cones that provides a unique code for each color.  Explains color-blindness.

Pairs of visual neurons that work in opposition.  Explains after images.

The part of the occipital lobe that contains the primary visual cortex.

The inability to recognize objects by sight

How features are linked together so that we see unified objects in our visual world rather than free-floating or miscombined features.

A perceptual mistake where features from multiple objects are incorrectly combined.

The idea that focused attention is not required to detect the individual features that comprise a stimulus but is required to bind those individual features together.

A perceptual principle stating that even as aspects of sensory signals change, perception remains constant.

A mental representation that can be directly compared to a viewed shape in the retinal image.

Aspects of a scene that yield information about depth when viewed with only one eye.

The difference in the retinal images of the two eyes that provide information about depth.

The perception of movement as a result of alternating signals appearing is rapid succession in different locations.

When people fail to detect changes to the visual details of a scene.

A failure to perceive objects that are not the focus of attention.

How high or low a sound is

A sound's intensity.

A listener's experience of sound quality resonance.

A fluid-filled tube that is the organ of auditory transduction.

A structure in the inner ear that undulates when vibrations from the ossicles reach the cochlear fluid.

Specialized auditory receptor neurons embedded in the basilar membrane.

A portion of the temporal lobe that contains the primary auditory cortex.

The cochlea encodes different frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane.

The cochlea registers low frequencies via the firing rate of action potential entering the auditory nerve.

The active exploration of the environment by touching and grasping objects with our hands.

Feeling pain when sensory information from internal and external areas converges on the same nerve cells in the spinal cord.

A theory of pain perception based on the idea that signals arriving from pain receptors in the body can be stopped, or gating by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions.

The three fluid-villed semicircular canals and adjacent organs located next to the cochlea in each inner ear.

Receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell.

A brain structure located above the nasal cavity beneath the frontal lobes.

Biochemical odorants emitted by other members of its species that can affect an animal's behavior or physiology.

The organ of taste transduction.