Download Skin sense/touch

Sensation – Vocabulary List
AP Psychology
Key Terms:
Note: These are for your benefit! The better you know them better prepared you’ll be! Some of them
are not in the Myers text, but you can find the rest of them online or in other textbooks the instructor
has. HANDWRITE words and definitions!
1. Bottom-up processing
2. Top-down processing
3. Sensation
4. Perception
5. Psychophysics
6. Absolute threshold
7. Difference threshold (or ‘jnd’)
8. Subliminal stimulation
9. Sensory adaptation
10. Sensory interaction
11. Transduction
12. Parallel processing
13. Serial processing
14. Proprioceptive senses (“sense of
locomotion”)
15. Vestibular sense
16. Kinesthesis
17. Phantom limb
18. Chronic pain
Vision and Color:
1. Wavelength
2. Hue (color)
3. Amplitude
4. Intensity
5. Brightness
6. Saturation
7. Complexity (purity)
8. Cornea
9. Iris
10. Pupil
11. Lens
12. Accommodation
13. Vitreous
14. Retina
15. Fovea
16. Acuity
17. Nearsightedness
18. Farsightedness
19. Rods
20. Cones
21. Bipolar cells
22. Ganglion cells
23. Optic nerve
24. Optic chiasm
25. Blind spot
26. Thalamus
27. Primary visual cortex (striate
cortex)
28. Feature detectors
29. Color constancy
30. Afterimage effect
31. Cataract
Hearing/Audition:
1. Sound
2. Pitch
3. Frequency
4. Amplitude
5. Loudness
6. Complexity
7. Timbre
8. Pinna
9. Outer/middle/inner ear
10. Auditory canal
11. Tympanic membrane (eardrum)
12. Ossicles
13. Malleus (hammer)
14. Incus (anvil)
15. Stapes (stirrup)
16. Oval window
17. Cochlea
18. Fluid (perilymph)
19. Basilar membrane
20. Tectorial membrane
21. Organ of corti
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22. Hair cells
23. Cilia
24. Auditory nerve
25. Sound localization
26. Conduction deafness
27. Nerve deafness (sensorineural
hearing loss)
Smell/Olfaction:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Pheromones
Nasal cavities (nostrils)
Olfactory epithelium
Olfactory nerve
Olfactory bulb
Taste/Gustation:
1. Taste buds
2. Papillae
3. Taste receptors (sweet, sour,
salty, bitter)
Skin sense/touch
1. Skin/cutaneous receptors
(pressure, temperature and pain)
Theories:
1. Signal detection theory
2. Weber’s law
3. Young-Helmholtz trichromatic
(three-color) theory
4. Opponent-process theory
5. Place theory (hearing)
6. Frequency theory (hearing)
7. Gate-Control Theory
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The Edible Senses
AP Psychology
Your task is as follows…You and a partner (if you want one) are in a contest with other class
members to create, using any edible medium, the ‘best’ model of the eye or the ear. The winners
in each organ will receive a prize!
I am restricting you to the eye and ear, because these two senses seem to be College Board’s
favorites on syllabi and exams.
You will need to label the various parts and their respective functions from the point at which the
eye/ear receives the stimulus to the point where it reaches the thalamus (you can stop there if you
want to. Continue on to the association areas and the signal’s in-between visits to various parts of
the cortex for extra credit).
To effectively illustrate all of the parts with which I am asking you to be familiar (see complete
list below), you will probably need to show the eye or the ear from the cross-sectional (sliced)
perspective. How else are you supposed to show us what is inside of it? The sense organ you
choose to build should be larger than the actual size of the eye or ear. For comparison’s sake, the
organ you construct should be a bit smaller than a regulation soccer ball. Best of luck!! Let the
best man and/or woman win.
Eye parts/regions:
Light (stimulus),cornea, pupil, iris, lens, vitreous, retina, fovea (on retina), rod receptors,
cone receptors, optic nerve, optic chiasm, thalamus
*be sure to include in your explanations of the rod and cone receptors what each kind is in charge of doing
in the eye
Ear parts/regions:
Sound waves (stimulus), pinna, auditory canal, tympanic membrane (eardrum), ossicles
(malleus [hammer], incus [anvil], stapes [stirrup]), oval window, round window, cochlea,
basilar membrane, hair receptors (cilia), tectorial membrane, auditory (or cochlear) nerve,
thalamus
***Note: You do not have to eat your senses after the project.***
Due at the beginning of class on Monday, Nov. 4 for A-Day
students and Tuesday, Nov. 5 for B-Day students.
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Creating a Children’s Story to Explain the Five Senses
AP Psychology
In an attempt to understand the complexity of our senses and how we process and encode
various stimuli from our environment, you will need to create a children’s story that
addresses each of the five senses (vision, audition, olfaction, gustation, and touch). This
will require some reading (Modules 11-14 address sensation) and creativity. The story
should appeal to children between the ages of five and eight and make a challenging and
complex subject (sensation and transduction) easily digestible to them.
‘Rules’ of the game:
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Your story must be a minimum of ten pages in length (five pages of illustrations
and five pages of text, or an equivalent combination).
Your story should appeal to 5-8 year-olds (i.e., make it simple, using vocabulary
that will be easily understood by children).
You need to include some specific terms from Modules 11-14 (see class notes and
vocabulary lists) to give them the information they need to have to comprehend
each sense. For example, you may want to incorporate key structures (e.g., retina,
cochlea) for each sense organ into the story or discuss the process of transduction.
Just make your explanations a bit more simplistic than you might with your peers
or teachers. Explicit definitions are not required.
You may work in pairs or alone. However, if you work with another person, I
expect double the final product.
Use your imagination. You could approach the story from a narrator’s
perspective. You could be describing an event in a journal entry. You could be a
child living through a particularly vivid sensory experience. You could describe a
dream. There are countless options…have fun and be creative!!!
You will be asked to read your story to the class as if they were an audience of
children between the ages of five and eight.
For extra credit, you may read your story to an actual 5-8 year old and type up a
1-page, double-spaced “Reflection” on whether or not your story successfully
taught him/her about transduction in the five senses. You must use evidence and
specific explanations.
Due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, Nov. 12 for B-Day
students and Wednesday, Nov. 13 for A-Day students.
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