Sensation & Perception (Broadly)
The encoding of physical energy from the environment into neural signals.
What is sensation?
The level at which a person notices a change in stimuli. (Think very generally).
This characteristic of soundwaves determines how loud a certain sound is.
What is amplitude?
This is the phenomenon where we focus our awareness on one particular stimulus and ignore others.
What is selective attention?
What is perceptual constancy?
The interpreting of sensations based on your expectations and experiences.
What is perception?
The minimum amount a certain stimuli must be present for a person to detect it 50% of the time.
This part of your eye detects lightness and darkness (black/white hues) in your retina.
What are rods?
This theory studies how we incorporate different pieces of information into an organized whole.
What is Gestalt theory?
The mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another, based on context and schemas.
What is perceptual set?
The process by which your brain creates perceptions with your sensory information based on expectations and experiences.
What is top-down processing?
The minimum difference between two stimuli required for a person to notice the difference between the two 50% of the time.
What is difference threshold?
This part of your ear, also known as your ear drum, receives sound energy and passes it on to your ossicles.
What is tympanic membrane?
The organization of our vision into objects that stand out from their surroundings, according to Gestalt theory.
What is figure-ground?
Clues we take in one eye at a time to determine distance.
What are monocular cues?
The process by which your brain absorbs and organizes your sensory information.
What is bottom-up processing?
The theory that thresholds are proportional to one's environment, rather than a fixed amount.
What is Weber's Law?
Someone with red-green colorblindness would be experiencing a malfunction in these parts of their eye.
What are cones?
This is our perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups, according to Gestalt theory.
What is grouping?
Our perception that an object that blocks another object is closer, which serves as a monocular cue.
What is interposition?
What is transmission?
What is subliminal?
This sense, which makes up part of our sense of touch, senses extreme temperatures.
What is coldness?
According to this Gestalt theory grouping, we perceive uniform and linked shapes as a single unit.
What is connectedness?
The extent to which the eyes turn inward when looking at an object, used as a binocular cue to determine distance.
What is convergence?