Psychology Chapter 4 Vocabulary

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

Simple awareness due to the stimulation of a sense organ.

Simple awareness due to the stimulation of a sense organ

What takes place when many sensors in the body convert physical signals from the environment into 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 both on a person's sensitivity to the stimulus in the presense 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 colour, operate under normal daylight conditions, and allow us to focus on fine detail.

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

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

An area of the retina that 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.

Pairs of visual neurons that work in opposition

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

The inability to recognize objects by sight

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

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

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

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

A depth cue based on the movement of the head over time.

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

How high or low a sound is

A sound's intensity

A listener's experience of sound quality or 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.

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

The cochlea registers low frequencies vie the firing rate of action potentials entering the auditory nerve.

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

Feeling of pain when sensory information from internal and external areas converge 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 gated, by interneurons in the spinal cord via feedback from two directions.

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

Receptor cells that initiate the sense of smell.

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

The organ of taste transduction