Chapter 5 Exam 2

Jack is camping in the woods. As night falls, it is initially pitch black. But eventually, he notices a very faint light in the distance. The light is so faint that he can barely see it, and his friend has not noticed it at all. The light is right at the _________ threshold.

Absolute Absolute threshold - right at the point of undetectable

Each eye sees more of the world on its own side of the visual field. A combination of the views from the two eyes provides humans with an adaptive advantage by creating a broader panorama of the scene. It also creates the depth cue of ________.

Binocular Disparity Binocular - two eyes Disparity - difference in view fields

According to this information-processing model, the recognition of patterns occurs because the data is relayed from a lower level to a higher level of processing in the brain.

Bottom-up processing Sometimes it is that easy

Japhet knows that while rods are spread throughout the retina, cones are concentrated around the fovea. From this knowledge, what might Japhet infer?

Color is easier to see in the center of the visual field. Think about it, if you have your phone display a picture, and you put the phone to the side. Look at it from your peripheral. The colors look all wonky.

There is a loaf of bread behind a container of milk on the table in front of you. You see the bread as a single loaf rather than two loaf halves. Which Gestalt principle accounts for this outcome?

Continuity/good continuity Mnemonic: Gestalt=whole, whole loaf of bread

As Pippa threads a needle, her eyes rotate inward. She knows the needle is close enough to perform the task by virtue of the depth cue termed _______.

Convergence Eyes go in(converge) when you thread a needle.

Your text describes a study in which pregnant women either drank water or carrot juice during pregnancy and while nursing. Some women drank carrot juice during both periods, some drank carrot juice while pregnant and water while nursing, others did the opposite, and some only drank water during both periods. What do the findings of this study illustrate?

Culture influences infants' taste preferences. Babies prefer familiar foods.

Taj wants to create a robot that has sensation but not perception. The robot should __________

Detect external stimuli but not interpret them Sensation - detection Perception - interpretation

Katie notices there is a new barista at her favorite coffee shop. She also notices her vanilla latte tastes just slightly sweeter than usual. The taste difference is right at the ________ threshold

Difference

Leroy throws a party while his parents are out of town. During the party, Monica runs up to Leroy and exclaims, "Your mom just pulled up to the house in her Jeep!" When Leroy looks out the window, he quickly determines that the Jeep is not his parents' because it is not the right color. In signal detection terminology, Monica's response is a ___________, while Leroy's is a _________.

False alarm Correct Rejection

Dr. Ramos is a radiologist who looks at dozens of scans each day to diagnose everything from broken bones to tumors. Every once in a while, she sees something on the scan that turns out to be nothing. In Signal Detection Theory, this outcome is referred to as a:

False alarm She finds something in the scan, but it is a false alarm

Joel needs new glasses. He is getting older, and he feels his eyes getting tired when he tries to read a book up close. He knows that the muscles in each eye are straining in order to

Fine-tune how the lens bends the light

Melody is looking up a phone number in a phone book with tiny print. She will most likely be able to read the number if she looks at the phone book with her ________ because it has the largest number of ___________

Fovea - center of retina where vision is most accurate Cones

Chris' favorite song starts off at a low pitch but then the lead singer finishes the song at a higher octave. In other words, Chris likes the way the _______ of the notes changes over the course of the song.

Frequency

Juan and Joseph are opera singers. Juan is a baritone; Joseph has a higher-pitched tenor voice. The sound waves from Juan's voice are lower in ________ than those from Joseph's voice.

Frequency

The taste sensation of umami is a result of the detection of _______, which is a naturally occurring substance found in foods such as meat, some cheeses, and mushrooms.

Glutamate

The base of the cochlea responds to _______ sounds, while the tip of the cochlea responds to ________ sounds.

High frequency Low Frequency Mnemonic: High F goes to low C, low F to high C.

Regarding visual illusions, which of the following statements is most accurate?

Illusions help reveal normal perceptual processes.

Jess is skating in a roller derby bout. A referee blows her whistle to signal he end of the jam. In a process called perception, ______.

Jess's brain processes the signals and constructs a representation of the whistle, which means "Stop Skating"

As Fatima gazes out onto the mountain landscape, she is able to tell what is near to her and what is far away by using both __________ cues, like occlusion, relative size, and linear perspective, and __________ cues, like disparity.

Monocular - one eye Binocular - two eyes

The blind spot in our visual field exists because ________.

No rods or cones exist on the spot where the optic nerve attaches to the retina

Damian frequently runs into Carmen while he is walking his dog. He is puzzled because Carmen always greets his dog but never greets him until he has spoken to her. He becomes even more perplexed when Carmen says, "Oh look, there's Ryan's car," even though Ryan is standing right next to the car. You could enlighten Damian by telling him that Carmen quite likely suffers from____________________.

Prosopagnosia

When we detect physical stimuli, such as odors, light, and sounds, we call this

Sensation

Anna is reading her psychology text. The activation of receptors in her retina is called ________ sensation; her interpretation of the stimuli as particular words is termed ________.

Sensation - sensing Perception - interpreting

When Marla first moved to New York City, she could hardly sleep because of all the noise coming from the nearby street. After a month or two, she stopped noticing these noises, and now she feels like she would have a hard time sleeping in a quiet country village. What explains this change?

Sensory adaptation The change in sensory receptors in relation to the stimulus.

Consider the following patterns >>>>><<<<< ; +*+++**++* The characters in the first pattern are perceived as a single figure, whereas the ten characters in the second pattern are perceived as separate groups of characters. Which Gestalt principle accounts for this outcome?

Similarity

Gary was in a motorcycle accident and damaged his thalamus. Gary will have no difficulty doing what?

Smelling roses in his garden

Merlin is getting older and losing his ability to hear. Luckily, his pet owl not only hears well but also can use cues to locate where a sound comes from. The owl is able to do this because _____________.

Sounds reach the closest ear first, and this small timing difference gives away the location.

Abel and Junko are both artists, but Abel works in a theater while Junko paints and draws. When working with color, Abel uses light and Junko uses pigment. Abel's art relies on ___________ and Junko's on ___________.

Subtractive Color Mixing - light Additive Color Mixing - pigment

When Gretchen eats her favorite brand of pickle, the molecules stimulate taste receptors located in ___________ that are grouped within _________.

Taste buds - receptors in the bumps Papillae - the visible bumps

Pum is lying awake and listening to the sounds of the city. He hears a very low-pitched sound in the distance. How does his auditory system code this type of pitch?

Temporal coding - detects pitch

When you are on a small bluff, the ocean sand looks smooth and uniform, but when you sit down on the sand you can see all the bumps and colors. This difference is an example of which depth cue?

Texture Gradient - texture appears finer up close

If you close one eye, you will still be able to use ________ as a depth cue, but you will not be able to use _________ as a depth cue.

Texture gradients Disparity

How do the light waves reflected by a blue object differ from those reflected by a red object?

The blue object reflects shorter wavelength light

Sergio is practicing the violin. His roommate, Stefan, is getting annoyed because the sound waves coming out of the violin are of extremely high frequency. In other words,

The noise is too-high pitched for Stefan

Hunter and Marissa went out to their patio late at night to look at the stars. Hunter had been reading about constellations, and sure enough, he saw that several clusters of stars seemed to be organized into identifiable shapes. Marissa, however didn't see these identifiable shapes. Hunter's interest in constellations may have led to __________.

Top-down processing "making use of information that has already been introduced into the brain"

As Stacie is driving her car down the road, a traffic light turns red to green. Stacie's sensory receptors translate the light into neural signals for the brain in a process called:

Transduction

Because the brain cannot process physical stimuli directly, it must convert the stimuli into chemical and electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. This process is known as

Transduction Trans- change Therefore, it changes the stimuli into things the brain can interpret

Carlos accidentally added an extra tablespoon of sugar into a cake batter. This will probably not matter much, although the same tablespoon of sugar in his potato casserole would be much more noticeable. What explains this difference?

Weber's Law Weber's Law - change in a stimulus (ex Sweetness) that is noticeable is a constant ratio