Psych LearningCurve 6a

The difference threshold is the minimum difference that a person can detect between any two stimuli _____ percent of the time.

50

A study referred to in your text showed that a softball will appear _____ when you are hitting well.

Bigger

Imagine trying to assemble a complex airplane model one piece at a time without knowing what type of airplane you are constructing. To accomplish this task, you would work with the individual pieces to build the image using _____ processing.

Bottom-up

Sensory analysis starts with the sensory receptors and works up to the integration of sensory information in the _____. This process is called bottom-up processing.

Brain

Both perceptual set and _____ indicate how our experiences help us to construct perception.

Context

You are riding your bicycle and after the 40th mile you have one last hill to climb. You are likely to perceive the hill as:

Higher than the other hills

Both perceptual set and context indicate how our experiences help us to construct _____.

Perception

_____ refers to the process of organizing and interpreting sensations.

Perception

Danae's roommate's friend is coming for a visit. Her roommate tells her that her friend is rather self-centered. When the friend arrives she tells them that she is wearing some new jeans she just bought on sale. You perceive this comment as attention seeking. This perception demonstrates the impact of _____.

Perceptual Set

_____ is the process by which we detect physical energy in the environment and encode that energy as neural signals.

Sensation

When you arrived at the gym Tuesday morning, you noticed the musty odor of the showers in the locker room. As you finished changing, you did not notice the smell. This is probably the result of:

Sensory Adaptation

_____ refers to the conversion of one form of energy into another.

Transduction

The principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage rather than a constant amount is called:

Weber's Law

Studying the impact of boredom and fatigue on people's _____ thresholds would involve research based on signal detection theory.

absolute

The size of the _____ threshold is greater for heavier objects than for lighter ones. This best illustrates Weber's law.

difference

Analysis that is guided by higher-level mental processes, such as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations. This process is called:

top-down processing

The fact that perceptions involve more than the sum of our sensations best illustrates the importance of:

top-down processing

You open your eyes in the morning to see flowers by your bedside. At that point, your 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