Ch.4 Topics 3.1-3.2

Which of the following refers to the just-noticeable difference between two stimuli?

Difference threshold

An individual's ability to focus on a particular conversation in a noisy and crowded room is called

selective attention

Every day, one sees, hears, smells, tastes, and feels stimuli from the outside world. The process of collecting this data about the world is referred to as _____.

sensation

People listening to rock music played backward often perceive an evil message if specifically told what to listen for. That phenomenon best illustrates

top-down processing

The process of converting incoming physical energy into a neural code that can be processed is called

transduction

Weber's law refers to

two stimuli differing by the same percentage in order to be perceived as different.

The intensity at which a sound becomes audible 50% of the time for a given individual is known as the individual's

absolute threshold

synesthesia refers to

one sense inducing an experience in another sense

In psychology, the process of organizing and interpreting incoming sensory information is called _____.

perception

All summer Thomas hears the sound of the icecream truck approaching before his brother Oscar hears it. Thomas most likely has which of the following?

A lower absolute threshold for hearing than Oscar

A table that shows S.D.T Possible Outcomes is most likely to be used in a study investigating _________________

Signal detection

A person is asked to listen to a series of tones presented in pairs, and asked to say whether the tones in each pair are the same or different in pitch. In this situation the experimenter is most likely measuring the individual's

difference threshold

A subliminal stimulus is a stimulus that

falls below the threshold for conscious detection

On his first day of work at the bakery, Brad was nearly overwhelmed by the sweet odor of the baked goods. However, by lunchtime, he did not even notice the smell. This is an example of

sensory adaptation

When Rosa has a cold, she cannot taste the flavor of her pizza. Which of the following psychological terms describes Rosa's inability to taste?

sensory interaction

Mechanoreceptors are involved in all of the following excpet

smell

Research has shown that a major reason for poor performance while multitasking is that while multitasking, people

switch their attention rapidly from task to task, so they miss critical information associated with a task that is not receiving their attention

People tend to have difficulty naming the color in which a word is printed when the word itself refers to a different color. This finding is called

the Stroop effect