Vocabulary

Absolute threshold
The smallest amount of stimulation needed for detection by a sense.
Action Potential
A transient all-or-nothing electrical current that is conducted down the axon when the membrane potential reaches the threshold of excitation.
Affective forecasting
Predicting how one will feel in the future after some event or decision.
Agnosia
Loss of the ability to perceive stimuli.
Anchoring
The bias to be affected by an initial anchor, even if the anchor is arbitrary, and to insufficiently adjust our judgments away from that anchor.
Anosmia
Loss of the ability to smell.
Anterograde amnesia
Inability to form new memories for facts and events after the onset of amnesia.
Attitude
A psychological tendency that is expressed by evaluating a particular entity with some degree of favor or disfavor.
Audience design
Constructing utterances to suit the audience’s knowledge.
Audition
Ability to process auditory stimuli. Also called hearing.
Auditory canal
Tube running from the outer ear to the middle ear.
Auditory hair cells
Receptors in the cochlea that transduce sound into electrical potentials.
Autobiographical memory
Memory for the events of one’s life.
Automatic
A behavior or process has one or more of the following features: unintentional, uncontrollable, occurring outside of conscious awareness, and cognitively efficient.
Availability heuristic
A heuristic in which the frequency or likelihood of an event is evaluated based on how easily instances of it come to mind.
Axon
Part of the neuron that extends off the soma, splitting several times to connect with other neurons; main output of the neuron.
Basic-level category
The neutral, preferred category for a given object, at an intermediate level of specificity.
Behaviorism
The study of behavior.
Biases
The systematic and predictable mistakes that influence the judgment of even very talented human beings.
Binocular advantage
Benefits from having two eyes as opposed to a single eye.
Binocular disparity
Difference is images processed by the left and right eyes.
Binocular vision
Our ability to perceive 3D and depth because of the difference between the images on each of our retinas.
Bottom-up processing
Building up to perceptual experience from individual pieces.
Bounded awareness
The systematic ways in which we fail to notice obvious and important information that is available to us.
Bounded ethicality
The systematic ways in which our ethics are limited in ways we are not even aware of ourselves.
Bounded rationality
Model of human behavior that suggests that humans try to make rational decisions but are bounded due to cognitive limitations.
Bounded self-interest
The systematic and predictable ways in which we care about the outcomes of others.
Bounded willpower
The tendency to place greater weight on present concerns rather than future concerns.
Brain Stem
The “trunk” of the brain comprised of the medulla, pons, midbrain, and diencephalon.
Broca’s Area
An area in the frontal lobe of the left hemisphere. Implicated in language production.
Category
A set of entities that are equivalent in some way. Usually the items are similar to one another.
Central Nervous System
The portion of the nervous system that includes the brain and spinal cord.
Cerebellum
The distinctive structure at the back of the brain, Latin for “small brain.”
Cerebrum
Usually refers to the cerebral cortex and associated white matter, but in some texts includes the subcortical structures.
Chameleon effect
The tendency for individuals to nonconsciously mimic the postures, mannerisms, facial expressions, and other behaviors of one’s interaction partners.
Chemical senses
Our ability to process the environmental stimuli of smell and taste.
Chutes and Ladders
A numerical board game that seems to be useful for building numerical knowledge.
Cochlea
Spiral bone structure in the inner ear containing auditory hair cells.
Cognitive psychology
The study of mental processes.
Collectivism
The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the group. Collectivists are likely to emphasize duty and obligation over personal aspirations.
Common ground
Information that is shared by people who engage in a conversation.
Concept
The mental representation of a category.
Concrete operations stage
Piagetian stage between ages 7 and 12 when children can think logically about concrete situations but not engage in systematic scientific reasoning.
Cones
Photoreceptors that operate in lighted environments and can encode fine visual details. There are three different kinds (S or blue, M or green and L or red) that are each sensitive to slightly different types of light. Combined, these three types of cones allow you to have color vision.
Cones
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to color. Located primarily in the fovea.
Consciousness
Awareness of ourselves and our environment.
Conservation problems
Problems pioneered by Piaget in which physical transformation of an object or set of objects changes a perceptually salient dimension but not the quantity that is being asked about.
Consolidation
Process by which a memory trace is stabilized and transformed into a more durable form.
Consolidation
The process occurring after encoding that is believed to stabilize memory traces.
Continuous development
Ways in which development occurs in a gradual incremental manner, rather than through sudden jumps.
Contralateral
Literally “opposite side”; used to refer to the fact that the two hemispheres of the brain process sensory information and motor commands for the opposite side of the body (e.g., the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body).
Contrast
Relative difference in the amount and type of light coming from two nearby locations.
Contrast gain
Process where the sensitivity of your visual system can be tuned to be most sensitive to the levels of contrast that are most prevalent in the environment.
Corpus Callosum
The thick bundle of nerve cells that connect the two hemispheres of the brain and allow them to communicate.
Cross-cultural psychology (or cross-cultural studies)
An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.
Cross-cultural studies (or cross-cultural psychology)
An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of standard scales as a means of making meaningful comparisons across groups.
Cue overload principle
The principle stating that the more memories that are associated to a particular retrieval cue, the less effective the cue will be in prompting retrieval of any one memory.
Cultural differences
An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to unique and distinctive features that set them apart from other cultures.
Cultural intelligence
The ability and willingness to apply cultural awareness to practical uses.
Cultural psychology​
An approach to researching culture that emphasizes the use of interviews and observation as a means of understanding culture from its own point of view.
Cultural relativism
The principled objection to passing overly culture-bound (i.e., “ethnocentric”) judgements on aspects of other cultures.
Cultural script
Learned guides for how to behave appropriately in a given social situation. These reflect cultural norms and widely accepted values.
Cultural similarities
An approach to understanding culture primarily by paying attention to common features that are the same as or similar to those of other cultures
Culture
A pattern of shared meaning and behavior among a group of people that is passed from one generation to the next.
Dark adaptation
Adjustment of eye to low levels of light.
Dark adaptation
Process that allows you to become sensitive to very small levels of light, so that you can actually see in the near-absence of light.
Decay
The fading of memories with the passage of time.
Declarative memory
Conscious memories for facts and events.
Dendrites
Part of a neuron that extends away from the cell body and is the main input to the neuron.
Depth perception
The ability to actively perceive the distance from oneself of objects in the environment.
Dichotic listening
A task in which different audio streams are presented to each ear. Typically, people are asked to monitor one stream while ignoring the other.
Dichotic listening
An experimental task in which two messages are presented to different ears.
Differential threshold (or difference threshold)
The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (See Just Noticeable Difference (JND))
Diffuse Optical Imaging​ (DOI)
A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in light as it is passed through the skull and surface of the brain.
Directional goals
The motivation to reach a particular outcome or judgment.
Discontinuous development
Discontinuous development
Dissociative amnesia
Loss of autobiographical memories from a period in the past in the absence of brain injury or disease.
Distinctiveness
The principle that unusual events (in a context of similar events) will be recalled and recognized better than uniform (nondistinctive) events.
Divided attention
The ability to flexibly allocate attentional resources between two or more concurrent tasks.
Dorsal pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “where” pathway.
Durability bias
A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates for how long one will feel an emotion (positive or negative) after some event.
Electroencephalography (EEG)
A neuroimaging technique that measures electrical brain activity via multiple electrodes on the scalp.
Empiricism
The belief that knowledge comes from experience.
Encoding
Process by which information gets into memory.
Encoding
The initial experience of perceiving and learning events.
Encoding specificity principle
The hypothesis that a retrieval cue will be effective to the extent that information encoded from the cue overlaps or matches information in the engram or memory trace.
Enculturation
The uniquely human form of learning that is taught by one generation to another.
Engrams
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event; also, memory trace.
Episodic memory
Memory for events in a particular time and place.
Ethnocentric bias (or ethnocentrism)
Being unduly guided by the beliefs of the culture you’ve grown up in, especially when this results in a misunderstanding or disparagement of unfamiliar cultures.
Ethnographic studies
Research that emphasizes field data collection and that examines questions that attempt to understand culture from it's own context and point of view.
Eugenics
The practice of selective breeding to promote desired traits.
Evaluative priming​ task
An implicit attitude task that assesses the extent to which an attitude object is associated with a positive or negative valence by measuring the time it takes a person to label an adjective as good or bad after being presented with an attitude object.
Exemplar
An example in memory that is labeled as being in a particular category.
Explicit attitude
An attitude that is consciously held and can be reported on by the person holding the attitude.
False memories
Memory for an event that never actually occurred, implanted by experimental manipulation or other means.
Flashbulb memory
Vivid personal memories of receiving the news of some momentous (and usually emotional) event.
Flashbulb memory
A highly detailed and vivid memory of an emotionally significant event.
Flavor
The combination of smell and taste.
Foils
Any member of a lineup (whether live or photograph) other than the suspect.
Formal operations stage
Piagetian stage starting at age 12 years and continuing for the rest of life, in which adolescents may gain the reasoning powers of educated adults.
Framing
The bias to be systematically affected by the way in which information is presented, while holding the objective information constant.
Frontal Lobe
The front most (anterior) part of the cerebrum; anterior to the central sulcus and responsible for motor output and planning, language, judgment, and decision-making.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI): A neuroimaging technique that infers brain activity by measuring changes in oxygen levels in the blood.
Functionalism
A school of American psychology that focused on the utility of consciousness.
G
Short for “general factor” and is often used to be synonymous with intelligence itself.
Gestalt psychology
An attempt to study the unity of experience.
Gustation
Ability to process gustatory stimuli. Also called taste.
Heuristics
A mental shortcut or rule of thumb that reduces complex mental problems to more simple rule-based decisions.
Heuristics
cognitive (or thinking) strategies that simplify decision making by using mental short-cuts
Hot cognition
The mental processes that are influenced by desires and feelings.
Impact bias
A bias in affective forecasting in which one overestimates the strength or intensity of emotion one will experience after some event.
Implicit Association Test
An implicit attitude task that assesses a person’s automatic associations between concepts by measuring the response times in pairing the concepts.
Implicit attitude
An attitude that a person cannot verbally or overtly state.
Implicit measures of attitudes
Measures of attitudes in which researchers infer the participant’s attitude rather than having the participant explicitly report it.
Inattentional blindness
The failure to notice a fully visible, but unexpected, object or event when attention is devoted to something else.
Inattentional blindness
The failure to notice a fully visible object when attention is devoted to something else.
Inattentional deafness
The auditory analog of inattentional blindness. People fail to notice an unexpected sound or voice when attention is devoted to other aspects of a scene.
Independent self
The tendency to define the self in terms of stable traits that guide behavior.
Individual differences
Ways in which people differ in terms of their behavior, emotion, cognition, and development.
Individualism
The cultural trend in which the primary unit of measurement is the individual. Individualists are likely to emphasize uniqueness and personal aspirations over social duty.
Information processing theories
Theories that focus on describing the cognitive processes that underlie thinking at any one age and cognitive growth over time.
Ingroup
Group to which a person belongs.
Intelligence
An individual’s cognitive capability. This includes the ability to acquire, process, recall and apply information.
Interdependent self
The tendency to define the self in terms of social contexts that guide behavior.
Interference
Other memories get in the way of retrieving a desired memory
Introspection
A method of focusing on internal processes.
IQ
Short for “intelligence quotient.” This is a score, typically obtained from a widely used measure of intelligence that is meant to rank a person’s intellectual ability against that of others.
Just noticeable difference (JND)
The smallest difference needed in order to differentiate two stimuli. (see Differential Threshold)
Lateral inhibition
A signal produced by a neuron aimed at suppressing the response of nearby neurons.
Lexicon
Words and expressions.
Light adaptation
Adjustment of eye to high levels of light.
Limbic System
Includes the subcortical structures of the amygdala and hippocampal formation as well as some cortical structures; responsible for aversion and gratification.
Limited capacity
The notion that humans have limited mental resources that can be used at a given time.
Linguistic intergroup bias
A tendency for people to characterize positive things about their ingroup using more abstract expressions, but negative things about their outgroups using more abstract expressions.
Mechanoreceptors
Mechanical sensory receptors in the skin that response to tactile stimulation.
Medial temporal lobes
Inner region of the temporal lobes that includes the hippocampus.
Memory traces
A term indicating the change in the nervous system representing an event.
Misinformation effect
A memory error caused by exposure to incorrect information between the original event (e.g., a crime) and later memory test (e.g., an interview, lineup, or day in court).
Misinformation effect
When erroneous information occurring after an event is remembered as having been part of the original event.
Mnemonic devices
A strategy for remembering large amounts of information, usually involving imaging events occurring on a journey or with some other set of memorized cues.
Mock witnesses
A research subject who plays the part of a witness in a study.
Mood-congruent memory
The tendency to be better able to recall memories that have a mood similar to our current mood.
Motivated skepticism
A form of bias that can result from having a directional goal in which one is skeptical of evidence despite its strength because it goes against what one wants to believe.
Multimodal perception
The effects that concurrent stimulation in more than one sensory modality has on the perception of events and objects in the world.
Myelin Sheath
Fatty tissue, that insulates the axons of the neurons; myelin is necessary for normal conduction of electrical impulses among neurons.
Nature
The genes that children bring with them to life and that influence all aspects of their development.
Need for closure
The desire to come to a decision that will resolve ambiguity and conclude an issue.
Nervous System
The body’s network for electrochemical communication. This system includes all the nerves cells in the body.
Neural impulse
An electro-chemical signal that enables neurons to communicate.
Neurons
Individual brain cells
Neurotransmitters
Chemical substance released by the presynaptic terminal button that acts on the postsynaptic cell.
Nociception
Our ability to sense pain.
Norm
Assessments are given to a representative sample of a population to determine the range of scores for that population. These “norms” are then used to place an individual who takes that assessment on a range of scores in which he or she is compared to the population at large.
Numerical magnitudes
The sizes of numbers.
Nurture
The environments, starting with the womb, that influence all aspects of children’s development.
Object permanence task
The Piagetian task in which infants below about 9 months of age fail to search for an object that is removed from their sight and, if not allowed to search immediately for the object, act as if they do not know that it continues to exist.
Observational learning
Learning by observing the behavior of others.
Occipital Lobe
The back most (posterior) part of the cerebrum; involved in vision.
Odorants
Chemicals transduced by olfactory receptors.
Olfaction
Ability to process olfactory stimuli. Also called smell.
Olfactory epithelium
Organ containing olfactory receptors.
Open ended questions
Research questions that ask participants to answer in their own words.
Opponent Process Theory
Theory of color vision that assumes there are four different basic colors, organized into two pairs (red/green and blue/yellow) and proposes that colors in the world are encoded in terms of the opponency (or difference) between the colors in each pair. There is an additional black/white pair responsible for coding light contrast.
Opponent-process theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by cells responsive to pairs of colors.
Ossicles
A collection of three small bones in the middle ear that vibrate against the tympanic membrane.
Outgroup
Group to which a person does not belong.
Overconfident
The bias to have greater confidence in your judgment than is warranted based on a rational assessment.
Parietal Lobe
The part of the cerebrum between the frontal and occipital lobes; involved in bodily sensations, visual attention, and integrating the senses.
Perception
The psychological process of interpreting sensory information.
Peripheral Nervous System
All of the nerve cells that connect the central nervous system to all the other parts of the body.
Phantom limb
The perception that a missing limb still exists.
Phantom limb pain
Pain in a limb that no longer exists.
Phonemic awareness
Awareness of the component sounds within words.
Photo spreads
A selection of normally small photographs of faces given to a witness for the purpose of identifying a perpetrator.
Photoactivation
A photochemical reaction that occurs when light hits photoreceptors, producing a neural signal.
Piaget’s theory
Theory that development occurs through a sequence of discontinuous stages: the sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational stages.
Pinna
Outermost portion of the ear.
Planning fallacy
A cognitive bias in which one underestimates how long it will take to complete a task.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
A neuroimaging technique that measures brain activity by detecting the presence of a radioactive substance in the brain that is initially injected into the bloodstream and then pulled in by active brain tissue.
Practitioner-Scholar Model
A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes clinical practice.
Preoperational reasoning stage
Period within Piagetian theory from age 2 to 7 years, in which children can represent objects through drawing and language but cannot solve logical reasoning problems, such as the conservation problems.
Primary auditory cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing auditory stimuli.
Primary somatosensory cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing somatosensory stimuli.
Primary visual cortex
Area of the cortex involved in processing visual stimuli.
Primary visual cortex (V1)
Brain region located in the occipital cortex (toward the back of the head) responsible for processing basic visual information like the detection, thickness, and orientation of simple lines, color, and small-scale motion.
Primed
A process by which a concept or behavior is made more cognitively accessible or likely to occur through the presentation of an associated concept.
Priming
A stimulus presented to a person reminds him or her about other ideas associated with the stimulus.
Principle of inverse effectiveness
The finding that, in general, for a multimodal stimulus, if the response to each unimodal component (on its own) is weak, then the opportunity for multisensory enhancement is very large. However, if one component—by itself—is sufficient to evoke a strong response, then the effect on the response gained by simultaneously processing the other components of the stimulus will be relatively small.
Psychological essentialism
The belief that members of a category have an unseen property that causes them to be in the category and to have the properties associated with it.
Psychophysics
Study of the relationships between physical stimuli and the perception of those stimuli.
Qualitative changes
Large, fundamental change, as when a caterpillar changes into a butterfly; stage theories such as Piaget’s posit that each stage reflects qualitative change relative to previous stages.
Quantitative changes
Gradual, incremental change, as in the growth of a pine tree’s girth.
Realism
A point of view that emphasizes the importance of the senses in providing knowledge of the external world.
Recoding
The ubiquitous process during learning of taking information in one form and converting it to another form, usually one more easily remembered.
Representativeness heuristic
A heuristic in which the likelihood of an object belonging to a category is evaluated based on the extent to which the object appears similar to one’s mental representation of the category.
Retina
Cell layer in the back of the eye containing photoreceptors.
Retrieval
Process by which information is accessed from memory and utilized.
Retrieval
The process of accessing stored information.
Retroactive interference
The phenomenon whereby events that occur after some particular event of interest will usually cause forgetting of the original event.
Retrograde amnesia
Inability to retrieve memories for facts and events acquired before the onset of amnesia.
Ritual
Rites or actions performed in a systematic or prescribed way often for an intended purpose. Example: The exchange of wedding rings during a marriage ceremony in many cultures.
Rods
Photoreceptors that are very sensitive to light and are mostly responsible for night vision.
Rods
Photoreceptors of the retina sensitive to low levels of light. Located around the fovea.
Sapir-Whorf hypothesis
The hypothesis that the language that people use determines their thoughts.
Schema
A mental model or representation that organizes the important information about a thing, person, or event (also known as a script).
Schema (plural: schemata)
A memory template, created through repeated exposure to a particular class of objects or events.
Scientist-practitioner model
A model of training of professional psychologists that emphasizes the development of both research and clinical skills.
Selective attention
The ability to select certain stimuli in the environment to process, while ignoring distracting information.
Selective listening
A method for studying selective attention in which people focus attention on one auditory stream of information while deliberately ignoring other auditory information.
Self-construal
The extent to which the self is defined as independent or as relating to others.
Semantic memory
The more or less permanent store of knowledge that people have.
Sensation
The physical processing of environmental stimuli by the sense organs.
Sensorimotor stage
Period within Piagetian theory from birth to age 2 years, during which children come to represent the enduring reality of objects.
Sensory adaptation
Decrease in sensitivity of a receptor to a stimulus after constant stimulation.
Shadowing
A task in which the individual is asked to repeat an auditory message as it is presented.
Shape theory of olfaction
Theory proposing that odorants of different size and shape correspond to different smells.
Signal detection
Method for studying the ability to correctly identify sensory stimuli.
Situation model
A mental representation of an event, object, or situation constructed at the time of comprehending a linguistic description.
Situational identity
Being guided by different cultural influences in different situations, such as home versus workplace, or formal versus informal roles.
Social brain hypothesis
The hypothesis that the human brain has evolved, so that humans can maintain larger ingroups.
Social cognition
The study of how people think about the social world.
Social networks
Networks of social relationships among individuals through which information can travel.
Sociocultural theories
Theory founded in large part by Lev Vygotsky that emphasizes how other people and the attitudes, values, and beliefs of the surrounding culture influence children’s development.
Soma
Cell body of a neuron that contains the nucleus and genetic information, and directs protein synthesis.
Somatosensation
Ability to sense touch, pain and temperature.
Somatotopic map
Organization of the primary somatosensory cortex maintaining a representation of the arrangement of the body.
Sound waves
Changes in air pressure. The physical stimulus for audition.
Spatial Resolution
A term that refers to how small the elements of an image are; high spatial resolution means the device or technique can resolve very small elements; in neuroscience it describes how small of a structure in the brain can be imaged.
Split-brain Patient
A patient who has had most or all of his or her corpus callosum severed.
Standard scale
Research method in which all participants use a common scale—typically a Likert scale—to respond to questions.
Standardize
Assessments that are given in the exact same manner to all people . With regards to intelligence tests standardized scores are individual scores that are computed to be referenced against normative scores for a population (see “norm”).
Stereotype threat
The phenomenon in which people are concerned that they will conform to a stereotype or that their performance does conform to that stereotype, especially in instances in which the stereotype is brought to their conscious awareness.
Stereotypes
Our general beliefs about the traits or behaviors shared by group of people.
Storage
The stage in the learning/memory process that bridges encoding and retrieval; the persistence of memory over time.
Structuralism
A school of American psychology that sought to describe the elements of conscious experience.
Subliminal perception
The ability to process information for meaning when the individual is not consciously aware of that information.
Superadditive effect of multisensory integration
The finding that responses to multimodal stimuli are typically greater than the sum of the independent responses to each unimodal component if it were presented on its own.
Synapses
Junction between the presynaptic terminal button of one neuron and the dendrite, axon, or soma of another postsynaptic neuron.
Synaptic Gap
Also known as the synaptic cleft; the small space between the presynaptic terminal button and the postsynaptic dendritic spine, axon, or soma.
Synesthesia
The blending of two or more sensory experiences, or the automatic activation of a secondary (indirect) sensory experience due to certain aspects of the primary (direct) sensory stimulation.
Syntax
Rules by which words are strung together to form sentences.
System 1
Our intuitive decision-making system, which is typically fast, automatic, effortless, implicit, and emotional.
System 2
Our more deliberative decision-making system, which is slower, conscious, effortful, explicit, and logical.
Tastants
Chemicals transduced by taste receptor cells.
Taste receptor cells
Receptors that transduce gustatory information.
Temporal Lobe
The part of the cerebrum in front of (anterior to) the occipital lobe and below the lateral fissure; involved in vision, auditory processing, memory, and integrating vision and audition.
Temporal Resolution
A term that refers to how small a unit of time can be measured; high temporal resolution means capable of resolving very small units of time; in neuroscience it describes how precisely in time a process can be measured in the brain.
Temporally graded ​​retrograde amnesia
Inability to retrieve memories from just prior to the onset of amnesia with intact memory for more remote events.
Tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon
The inability to pull a word from memory even though there is the sensation that that word is available.
Top-down processing
Experience influencing the perception of stimuli.
Transduction
The conversion of one form of energy into another.
Trichromacy theory
Theory that proposes that all of your color perception is fundamentally based on the combination of three (not two, not four) different color signals.
Trichromatic theory
Theory proposing color vision as influenced by three different cones responding preferentially to red, green and blue.
Tympanic membrane
Thin, stretched membrane in the middle ear that vibrates in response to sound. Also called the eardrum.
Typicality
The difference in “goodness” of category members, ranging from the most typical (the prototype) to borderline members.
Value judgment
An assessment—based on one’s own preferences and priorities—about the basic “goodness” or “badness” of a concept or practice.
Value-free research
Research that is not influenced by the researchers’ own values, morality, or opinions.
Ventral pathway
Pathway of visual processing. The “what” pathway.
Vestibular system
Parts of the inner ear involved in balance.
Vestibulo-ocular reflex
Coordination of motion information with visual information that allows you to maintain your gaze on an object while you move.
Weber’s law
States that just noticeable difference is proportional to the magnitude of the initial stimulus.
What pathway
Pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for your ability to recognize what is around you.
Where-and-How pathway
Pathway of neural processing in the brain that is responsible for you knowing where things are in the world and how to interact with them.