Psych 3

Domingo has just hit Play to begin listening to a new song he bought. Based on the structure of the ear, what will the sound waves contact first after moving through Domingo's auditory canal?

The eardrum

One-year-old Marcus turns away in disgust if a bitter substance is placed on his tongue. The reason for such a reaction is most likely

an inborn distaste for bitter that protects us from potential poisons in the environment

Eleanor Gibson and her colleagues have used the visual cliff to measure an infant's ability to perceive

depth

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

The reversible figure above illustrates the Gestalt organizing principle of

figure-ground

After spending hours in her kitchen preparing dinner, Rebecca no longer notices the strong smell of garlic until her guests arrive and mention the smell. Her failure to notice the smell of garlic illustrates

sensory adaptation

When a pair of lights flashing in quick succession seems to an observer to be one light moving from place to place, the effect is referred to as

the phi phenomenon

Balance is influenced by the

semicircular canals

The ability to see a cube in the diagram above is best explained by which of the following?

Gestalt principles of closure and continuity

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

Which study is a researcher who wants to draw correct cause-and-effect conclusions about the sense of smell likely to conduct?

A study in which the researcher randomly assigns 50 people to a group that is exposed to a strong smell of roses and 50 people to a group that experiences an odor-free environment to see whether the group exposed to the strong smell of roses reports experiencing more memories.

Which of the following supports the opponent-process theory of color vision?

Afterimages

Which of the following structures is part of the vestibular system?

B

Which part of the brain receives messages from the hair-like receptors that are involved in the vestibular sense?

Cerebellum

A researcher studied 30 people ages twenty to forty, 30 people ages forty-one to sixty, and 30 people ages sixty-one to eighty. The researcher set up two rooms—one with a faint rose smell, and one with a faint lemon smell. Each participant was asked to enter each room and identify the smell in the room. What research method did the researcher use, and what outcome would be found?

Cross-sectional. As people age, their sense of smell diminishes, especially in older age.

Alicia has a condition in which tiny crystals break loose and randomly touch and bend the hair cells in her semicircular canals. Which of the following is the most likely effect of this condition?

Dizziness and loss of balance

In the figure above, what letter corresponds to the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain?

E

John moves to a new job in a large urban area. For the first few days, John is continuously distracted by the sounds of traffic and street noise. By the end of the first week, John barely notices the sounds of the city. Which of the following has occurred?

Habituation

Damage to which of the following best explains conduction deafness?

Hammer, anvil, and stirrup

Which of the following theories most accurately explains pitch perception? Opponent process Frequency Place

II and III only

Which of the following is true of how the human eye detects the color red?

It relies on only cones.

Which of the following scenarios best demonstrates a context effect?

Jeannette does better on her exam when she takes it in the same room where she studies.

Ana injured her eye in an accident and has to wear a patch over the eye while it heals. Which of the following cues would she best be able to use to make judgments about the distance objects are from her?

Linear perspective

Feature detectors are neurons that are turned on or off by specific features of visual stimuli like edges and movement. Where in the visual system are these feature detectors located?

Occipital cortex

After staring at a green, black, and orange "American flag" for about a minute, an individual will see a red, white, and blue flag afterimage. Which of the following explains this phenomenon?

Opponent-process theory

Ana is instructed by her doctor to wear a patch over one eye while an infection heals. While wearing the patch, Ana will lose her ability to use which of the following depth perception cues?

Retinal disparity

Which of the following is a binocular cue for depth perception?

Retinal disparity

Which of the following is the correct path a neural impulse will follow through the different layers of the retina?

Rods and cones, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, optic nerve

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

Ernest and Josephine Hilgard conducted experiments in which participants had one hand in painfully icy water and the other hand on a button to alert the experimenter of feelings of pain. After the participants were hypnotized to not feel pain, participants did not verbally report feeling pain even though they subconsciously pressed the button to indicate that they felt pain. How did the experimenters explain the contradiction in pain perception?

The participants are experiencing dissociation.

When Kaylee's friends discovered she was going to have her tonsils removed, they told her she was going to be in a great deal of pain. After the surgery Kaylee reported that she was in a lot of pain, although most of her pain should have been alleviated by her pain medication. Given this scenario, which of the following best explains Kaylee's reporting of pain?

Top-down processing

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

absolute threshold

When struck by light energy, cones and rods in the retina generate neural signals that then activate the

bipolar cells

The place in the retina where the optic nerve exits to the brain is called the

blind spot

The Gestalt principle that refers to an individual's tendency to perceive an incomplete figure as whole is called

closure

The tendency of most people to identify a three-sided figure as a triangle, even when one of its sides is incomplete, is the result of a perceptual process known as

closure

People who are color blind most likely have deficiencies in their

cones

Ernie comes in from outdoors on a bright, sunny day and finds it to be very dark inside. Over the next few minutes, however, it becomes easier for Ernie to see inside. The perceptual process this scenario is describing is

dark adaptation

While attending a concert, Anthony finds that he can clearly recognize the melody coming from the lead violin above all the other instruments playing in the orchestra, even though the other instruments may be louder. Gestalt psychologists would explain Anthony's ability using the principle of

figure-ground

Visual acuity is best in the

fovea

The psychological experience of pitch is related to a sound wave's

frequency

It can be assumed that an individual described as a supertaster

is very sensitive to hot peppers

In the dark, an object is more clearly seen when viewed in peripheral vision than when viewed directly. This phenomenon occurs because the rods located in the retina are

more sensitive in the dark than cones and are not found in the fovea

The area labeled A contains the

ossicles

Alice is shopping with her daughter when she hears the word "mom." Alice answers, only to realize that the sales clerk said "ma'am" to a customer. This inaccurate perception can be attributed to

perceptual expectancy

In vision, transduction occurs within the

retina

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

selective attention

Using cell phones while driving increases the number of accidents because use of the phones requires

selective attention

Climbing an irregular set of stairs is more difficult for an individual who wears a patch over one eye primarily because

some depth perception is lost

Gustatory receptors are sensitive to all of the following taste qualities EXCEPT

spicy

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

A reason that one typically does not notice a blind spot in the visual field is that

the brain fills in missing information so there is no awareness that the visual field is incomplete

Luz, a math major, sees the drawing above as a Venn diagram. Her brother, an art major, sees it as two circles. The difference in perception is an example of

top-down processing

Tina is reading an important letter when she accidentally splashes water on the paper. The water has smudged a few words, but she is still able to understand what the letter says. This can be explained by

top-down processing

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

transduction