Sensation & Perception Terms
Anatomy of the Eye
Anatomy of the Ear
Visual Process
Hearing Process
100

The Process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimuli from our environment.

What is sensation?

100

This is the outer covering of the eye, protecting the eye and bending light to provide focus.

What is the cornea?

100

This is the place where sound waves travel from the outer ear to the middle ear.

What is the auditory or ear canal?

100

The dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light, what we know as red, yellow, blue, etc.

What is Hue?

100

This is the sense or act of hearing.

What is Audition?

200

The process or organizing and interpreting sensory information, allowing us to recognize meaningful objects and events.

What is perception?

200

This muscle tissue is colored and controls your pupil's ability to dilate and constrict. 

What is the iris?

200

A tight membrane that vibrates when struck by sound waves.

What is the eardrum?

200

The conversion of one form of stimulus energy, into neural impulses our brains can interpret.

What is Transduction?

200

These are jostling molecules of air, bumping into each other due to changes in air pressure.

What are Sound Waves?

300

Information processing beginning "at the bottom" with raw sensory data that are sent "up" to the brain for higher level analysis.


What is Bottom-Up processing?

300

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

What is the retina?

300

These three tiny bones in the middle ear concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the oval window.

What are the hammer, anvil, and stirrup?

300

Physical characteristics of visible light that helps us determine our sensory experience of them.

What are Wavelengths?

300

This is a tone's experience of highness or lowness dependent on frequency.

What is Pitch?

400

Information processing starting "at the top" with higher level cognitive processes (such as expectations and knowledge) and then "working down".

What is Top-Down processing?

400

This is the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster and objects are more in focus here than in the peripheral.

What is the fovea?

400

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

What is the cochlea?

400

The amount of energy in a light wave which we perceive as brightness determined by the wave's amplitude.

What is Intensity?

400

Measurement used to determine a sound waves' amplitude.

What are Decibels?

500

This is when people fail to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere while this is when people fail to notice changes in their environment.

What are Inattentional Blindness and Change Blindness?

500

These retinal receptor cells detect fine detail and give rise to color sensation.

What are cones?

500

These structures are responsible for turning sound waves into auditory neural impulses and sending them to the brain.

What are hair cells?

500

Electromagnetic energy that we perceive as color is known as this.

What is visible light?

500

This is the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time, also accounts for pitch.

What is frequency?