PSY 100 - Ch. 5

Prolonged exposure to sounds exceeding _____ dB may cause hearing loss.

85

Using sound as your example, show how these concepts differ: absolute threshold, subliminal stimulation, and difference threshold.

Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular sound (such as an approaching bike on the sidewalk behind you) 50 percent of the time. Subliminal stimulation happens when, without your awareness, your sensory system processes a sound that is below your absolute threshold. A difference threshold is the minimum difference needed to distinguish between two stimuli (such as between the sound of a bike and the sound of a runner coming up behind you) 50 percent of the time.

_____ processing proceeds from the lines, angles, and colors that form the stimuli around us.

Bottom-up

The ______ psychologists were fond of saying that in perception, the whole may exceed the sum of its parts.

Gestalt

Does perceptual set involve bottom-up or top-down processing? Why?

It involves top-down processing, because it draws on your experiences, assumptions, and expectations when interpreting stimuli.

What is the rapid sequence of events that occurs when you see and recognize a friend?

Light waves reflect off your friend and travel into your eyes. Receptor cells in your retina convert the light waves' energy into neural impulses sent to your brain. Your brain detector cells and work teams process the different parts of this visual input — including movement, form, depth, and color — on separate but parallel paths. Your brain interprets this information, based on previously stored information and your expectations, and forms a conscious perception of your friend.

Why are children often repelled by the taste of novel meat dishes and bitter vegetables?

Novel or bitter foods were considered potentially toxic by our ancestors.

_____ refers to our sense of smell.

Olfaction

_____ refers to the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information

Perception

Damon, who is among the 8 percent of males with colorblindness, suffers from the most common form of color blindness. Which statement BEST illustrates Damon's experience of color?

Red apples on a tree seem to be the same color as the surrounding green leaves.

What is the rough distinction between sensation and perception?

Sensation is the bottom-up process by which your sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimuli. Perception is the top-down process by which your brain creates meaning by organizing and interpreting what your senses detect.

Why is it after wearing shoes for a while, you cease to notice them?

The shoes provide constant stimulation. Thanks to sensory adaption, we tend to focus primarily on changing stimuli.

How do we normally perceive depth?

We are normally able to perceive depth thanks to (1) binocular cues (such as retinal disparity), and (2) monocular cues(which include relative height, relative size, interposition, linear perspective, light and shadow, and relative motion).

retinal disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth. By comparing images from the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object

cochlea

a coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear; sound waves traveling through the cochlear fluid trigger nerve impulses

monocular cues

a depth cue, such as interposition or linear perspective, available to either eye alone

binocular cues

a depth cue, such as retinal disparity, that depends on the use of two eyes

conduction hearing loss

a less common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

Intensity refers to the level of energy in a light wave; it is determined by the wave's height, or _____.

amplitude

Gestalt

an organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes

subliminal

below a person's absolute threshold for conscious awareness

Katrina is driving her 15-year-old car. She notices a sound coming from the engine, which involves _____. Katrina immediately starts thinking that the sound is similar to the sound the car made the last time she had it repaired, which involves _____.

bottom-up; top-down

Which of the following has NOT been proven to reduce pain? a. Distraction b. Hypnosis c. Phantom limb sensations d. Endorphines

c. Phantom limb sensations

Transduction

changing one form of energy into another. In sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies (such as sights, sounds, and smells) into neural impulses our brain can interpret

Mrs. Costello lives in Florida. She is gripped by a vision of her sister gravely injured in a car wreck happening that very moment in Pennsylvania. Mrs. Costello is inconsolable. Her husband calmly disproves Mrs. Costello's vision by calling his sister-in-law; her cheery voice greets him on the phone. Cleary, Mrs. Costello does not have the ability of _____ that she believes she possesses.

clairvoyance

You are a building contractor surveying the progress on a home that is being built. From one angle, it appears that the home is completely framed. However, when you move to the right, you see the gaps. This illustrates the Gestalt principle of _____.

closure

Making an analogy between hearing and vision, the auditory hair cells in the _____ are similar to the _____ in the retina.

cochlea; rods and cones

a less common form of hearing loss, caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

contends that hypnosis is a form of social influence — a by-product of normal social and mental processes

A snack manufacturer finds that it must increase the salt content of its chips by 8 percent in order for a sample of consumers to notice that the chips are saltier than they were before. This example BEST illustrates the concept of a(n) _____ threshold.

difference

Physical warmth may promote social warmth. In a café, for example, one may perceive another customer as friendlier when one is holding a steaming mug of coffee than when holding a chilled can of soda. This example illustrates the concept of:

embodied cognition

The neurotransmitter that serves as our natural painkiller is _____.

endorphins

Pat turns to look directly at a brightly colored bird her friend spotted in the garden. Pat is ensuring that the bird's image falls directly on her:

fovea.

sensorineural hearing loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's receptor cells or to the auditory nerve. The most common form of hearing loss (also called nerve deafness)

Denise wears an extremely bright yellow safety sweatshirt when she cycles to the gym after dark. The sweatshirt's brightness reflects the _____ of the light it reflects.

high amplitude

You are waiting for your friend to give you a ride on his new motorcycle. As your friend pulls up the driveway, the brakes squeal loudly. You get on, and then your friend steps on the engine. As the motorcycle accelerates, the engine roars loudly. The high-pitched squeal of the brakes was caused by _____ sound waves, and the equally loud but low-pitched roar of the engine was caused by _____ sound waves.

high-frequency; low-frequency

Marty and Becky are in the mood to have a hamburger for lunch. Marty wants to grill the hamburger outside instead of cooking it on top of the stove because he says he likes the taste of a grilled hamburger more than one cooked on the stove. The difference in taste Marty prefers is actually caused by the smell of the charcoal embedded into the hamburger. This is an example of sensory _____.

interaction

Julio is working on a series of landscape paintings. He wants to create a realistic depiction of the English countryside. To turn the flat surface of the canvas into a three-dimensional painting, he might use the technique of:

linear perspective.

Railroad tracks appear to converge in the distance. This provides a cue for depth perception known as:

linear perspective.

The amplitude of a sound wave determines our perception of (loudness/pitch)

loudness

The longer the sound waves are, the ____ (lower/higher) their frequency and the (lower/higher) their pitch.

lower; lower

perceptual set

mental tendencies and assumptions that set us up to perceive one thing and not another

Relative size, interposition, relative motion, and relative height are examples of _____ cues to depth perception.

monocular

feature detectors

nerve cells in the brain's visual cortex that respond to specific features of a stimulus, such as shape, angles, or movement

While Maria was stacking her term paper, she received a paper cut. The cut produced a sharp pain on her index finger. This pain was initiated by _____ in her skin.

nociceptors

Phantom limb sensations and other experiences of amputees show that the brain can produce pain in the absence of:

normal sensory input

vestibular sense

our sense of balance—our sense of body movement and position that enables our sense of balance.

nociceptors

pain receptors

Some stroke victims lose the capacity to perceive motion but retain the capacity to perceive shapes and colors. Others lose the capacity to perceive colors but retain the capacity to perceive movement and form. These peculiar visual disabilities BEST illustrate our normal capacity for:

parallel processing

perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change

Enrico is having trouble telling the difference between the sound of a tuba and the sound of a piccolo. Even though a piccolo produces much briefer, faster sound waves than does a tuba, he has trouble picking out the differences in the _____ of these sounds.

pitch

parallel processing

processing many aspects of a stimulus or problem at the same time

Dissociation theory

proposes that hypnosis is a special dual-processing state of dissociation — a split between normal sensations and conscious awareness. Dissociation theory seeks to explain why, when no one is watching, hypnotized people may carry out posthypnotic suggestions (which are made during hypnosis but carried out after the person is no longer hypnotized)

sensory adaptation

reduced sensitivity in response to constant stimulation.

Cones

retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of the retina, and that function in daylight or well-lit conditions. Cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations

Rods

retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray, and are sensitive to movement. Rods are necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond

Detection is to interpretation as _____ is to _____.

sensation; perception

audition

sense of hearing

Olfaction

sense of smell

Gustation

sense of taste

One sense influencing the perception of another is known as:

sensory interaction

Sensory receptors

sensory nerve endings that respond to stimuli

A door casts an increasingly trapezoidal image on our retinas as it opens, yet we still perceive it as rectangular. This illustrates:

shape constancy.

Mind-to-mind communication is to _____ as mind over matter is to _____.

telepathy; psychokinesis

perceptual adaptation

the ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field

vision

the ability to see

depth perception

the ability to see objects in three dimensions, although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance

Intensity

the amount of energy in a light wave or sound wave, which influences what we perceive as brightness or loudness. Intensity is determined by the wave's amplitude (height)

middle ear

the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones—hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), and stirrup (stapes)—that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window.

extrasensory perception (ESP)

the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition

Hue

the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth.

Wavelength

the distance from the peak of one light wave or sound wave to the peak of the next.

What are the three tiny bones in the middle ear?

the hammer (malleus), anvil (incus), and stirrup (stapes)

embodied cognition

the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments.

inner ear

the innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs

difference threshold

the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time. We experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference

absolute threshold

the minimum stimulus energy needed to detect a particular stimulus 50 percent of the time.

Optic nerve

the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain.

Fifty-year-old Jack finds that he really enjoys the taste of scotch, whiskey, mushrooms, strong peppers, and onions, but his 21-year-old son does not. The reason for this difference in taste is likely due to:

the number of taste buds in the mouth that decreases with age.

figure-ground

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground)

grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into meaningful groups

blind spot

the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye; this part of the retina is "blind" because it has no receptor cells

clairvoyance

the power to see things that cannot be perceived by the senses

sensory interaction

the principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste

Weber's Law

the principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount)

Perception

the process by which our brain organizes and interprets sensory information, transforming it into meaningful objects and events

Sensation

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

vestibular

the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance

opponent-process theory

the theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, blue-yellow, white-black) enable color vision. For example, some cells are turned "on" by green and turned "off" by red; others are turned on by red and off by green

Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory

the theory that the retina contains three different types of color receptors—one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue. When stimulated in combination, these receptors can produce the perception of any color

The phrase "THE CAT" appears in block letters as part of an advertising slogan on a billboard. The A and H are nearly identical in the stylized font that is used. However, the context of the words in the which the letters appear encourages readers to perceive the arrangement of three line segments as completely different letters in each case. This example reflects _____ processing.

top-down

Happy Moon Restaurant uses monosodium glutamate in most of its dishes to enhance the flavor. This also stimulates the fifth taste of _____.

umami

Kiara excels at gymnastics, especially at balance beam routines. Her skill depends in large part on her _____ sense.

vestibular