Sensation and Perception

• Pitch is the perception of how high or low a sound is.

Inner Ear Structures

• The inner ear structures include the cochlea, basilar membrane, hair cells, semicircular canal, and auditory nerve.

Outer Ear Structures

• The outer ear structures include the pinna and auditory canal.

• Synesthesia is when one sense triggers experiences in another, like perceiving colors when listening to music.

• The cochlea resembles a snail shell.

• Hair cells are to hearing as rods and cones are to vision.

• Sound causes vibrations in the basilar membrane.

• Proprioception is the sense of body position.

• Olfaction (smell) is the only sense directly connected to the forebrain.

• Motion sickness is caused by a mismatch between visual cues and vestibular information.

• Flavor is produced by taste buds.

• Receptor cells for touch, pressure, texture, pattern, and vibration are located in the skin.

• A hypnic jerk is the sensation of falling while asleep.

• The largest changes in brain EEG patterns occur during REM sleep.

• Insomnia is characterized by trouble falling asleep.

• Somnambulism is characterized by walking while sleeping.

• Narcolepsy is a condition where one falls asleep mid-conversation.

• According to Freud, dreams represent wishes.

• The activation-synthesis model suggests dreams are the mind's attempt to make sense of random neural activity during sleep.

• Encoding is transforming information in order to remember it.

• Visual encoding is storing information by converting it into mental pictures.

• Organizational encoding is categorizing information based on relationships among the items in a series to be remembered.

• Memory is the ability to store and retrieve information over time.

• Evolutionary perspective states that encoding of survival-related information is easier to recall.

• Echoic memory is the store of auditory information that decays very rapidly.

• Iconic memory is the store of visual information that decays very rapidly.

• Short-term memory can hold approximately seven items.

• Rehearsal is keeping information in short-term memory by mentally repeating it.

• Consolidation is the process by which memories become solid in the brain.

• Targeted Memory Reactivation (TMR) involves presenting sounds during sleep to reactivate and enhance consolidation of specific memories.

• Reconsolidation is where memories become vulnerable to disruption when recalled, requiring them to be consolidated again.

• Divergent creative thinking is generating ideas by combining different types of information in new ways.

• Retrieval is bringing to mind information that has been previously encoded and stored in memory.

• Working memory is active maintenance of information in short-term memory.

• Chunking is combining small pieces of information into larger clusters.

• Anterograde amnesia is the inability to transfer new information from short-term to long-term memory.

• Sleep is important for memory consolidation.

• A retrieval cue is information from the outside world associated with stored information that helps bring it to mind.

• Long-term memory can be broken up into implicit (does not require conscious recall) and explicit (requires conscious recall).

• Explicit memory occurs when people consciously or unintentionally retrieve past experiences.

• Implicit memory occurs when past experiences influence later behavior and performance, even without conscious effort to remember them.

• Collective memory is how people remember in groups.

• Collaborative inhibition is the negative effect of group recall on memory.

• Transience is forgetting that occurs with the passage of time.

• Hermann Ebbinghaus studied memory using nonsense syllables.

• Prospective memory is remembering to do things in the future.

• Blocking is being unable to retrieve information that is stored in memory.

• Misattribution is a memory sin, one of the primary causes of eyewitness misidentification.

• Persistence is the intrusive recollection of events we wish we could forget.

• Retroactive interference is when later learning impairs information learned earlier.

• Proactive interference is when earlier learning impairs memory for information acquired later.

• A drive is an internal state that pushes someone to take action to fulfill a need.

• An instinct is a natural behavior that happens when triggered.

• According to Abraham Maslow's, the first needs that tend to be satisfied are psychological, while the last is self-actualization.

• Extrinsic motivation is motivation to take action that leads to reward.

• Drive is an internal state caused by physiological needs.

• Homeostasis is a system that seeks equilibrium.

• Intrinsic motivation is motivation to take actions that are themselves rewarding.

• Self-discipline is a better predictor of school grades rather than IQ.

• Intrinsically motivated people enjoy the task, believe the task is important, and desire to do a good job.

• Intrinsically motivated people enjoy their work more often and are more creative.

• Overjustification is when people who are awarded for a behavior sometimes become less intrinsically motivated to repeat it.

• When achievement motivation is primed, it is operating unconsciously.

• Avoidance motivation is the motivation not to experience a negative outcome.

• Intrinsic motivation is when someone has a desire to know the material well

• Sensation is simple awareness due to stimulation of a sense organ.

• Perception is giving meaning

• Transduction is a process all the senses rely on.

• Psychophysics is a method that systematically relates the physical characteristics of a stimulus to an observer's perception.

• Absolute threshold is the minimal intensity needed to just barely detect a stimulus.

• Sensitivity is the ability to tell whether adjustable lights are on a low wattage first off, but not acuity for slight increases.

• Weber's law notes that noticeable differences of a stimulus is a constant proportion, despite variation in intensity.

• Signal detection theory (SDT) measures an individual's perceptual sensitivity while also taking noise, expectations, and motivation into account.

• Acuity is the ability to distinguish two very similar stimuli.

• Vision is clearest when an object is projected onto the fovea.

Light Path to the Brain

• The sequence of eye parts through which light passes on its way to the brain: cornea, pupil, lens, retina, optic nerve, brain.

• Cones are photoreceptors that detect color, operate in daylight, and permit focused fine detail.

• Missing cones are related to color blindness.

• The frequency of a sound wave determines its pitch.

• Attention is required to bind together the individual features of a stimulus.

• The visual system easily recognizes a person in all of their films.

• Perceptual constancy is easily used to recognize a letter regardless of how written.

• Closure is the Gestalt principle.

• Similarity is the tendency to perceive things that look similar as being part of the same group.

• Closure is when we fill in gaps to create a complete, whole object.

• Similarity is organizing football players uniforms.

• Continuity is when objects in spatial proximity tend to be grouped together

• Inattentional blindness is noticing a clown.

• Binding problem is a failure to identify that features are linked.