6a. Basic Concepts of Sensation and Perception

_____ refers to the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment.

Sensation

Sensory adaptation helps people:

concentrate on more important things.

Ahmad asked Reza to turn up the radio, so Reza increased the volume from level 5 to level 7. Reza could hear the difference but Ahmad couldn't. They differed in their _____ threshold.

Difference

People perceive an adult-child pair as looking more alike when told they are parent and child than when they are told that the adult and child are unrelated. This BEST illustrates the impact of _____.

Perceptual set

A researcher subliminally presents a visual image to participants, which increases the likelihood that they will later recognize the same briefly presented image. This best illustrates that information can be processed outside of _____ awareness.

conscious

A neutral facial expression may be perceived as sadder at a funeral than at a circus. This best illustrates a _____ effect.

context

A researcher subliminally presents words that are either emotionally positive (e.g., love) or negative (e.g., hate) immediately before showing pictures of houses to participants. When he asks the participants to rate the houses in terms of attractiveness, they:

give higher ratings to the houses that followed positive images.

Interpreting new sensory information within the framework of a past memory illustrates ______ processing.

top-down

Racial and ethnic stereotypes can sometimes bias perceptions of others' behaviors. This BEST illustrates the impact of:

top-down processing

When Lisa opens her eyes in the morning, she sees flowers by her bedside. Lisa's eyes are receiving light energy, which they change into neural messages for the brain to process. This conversion of one form of energy into another is called _____.

transduction