Chapter 3: Sensation and Perception

When Anita went to her doctor, he gave her a hearing test. During the test, the doctor presented tones to Anita through earphones. The tones started at a low intensity and then became louder. The doctor asked Anita to raise her hand whenever she started to hear a sound. The doctor was testing Anita's ________.

absolute threshold

The lowest level of stimulation that a person can consciously detect 50 percent of the time the stimulation is present is called

absolute threshold.

We can see a candle flame at 30 miles on a clear, dark night, and we can hear the tick of a watch 20 feet away in a quiet room. These two facts are examples of ________.

absolute thresholds

The Müller-Lyer illusion exists in cultures in which there are ________.

buildings with lots of corners

The tendency to complete figures that are incomplete is known as ________.

closure

You are told you are going to be shown some words related to food. The experiment then shows you the "pizao" and you perceive the word "pizza." This shows that your perceptions are affected by your________.

expectations

In people who have been blind since birth and who then have had their sight restored, depth perception ________.

is absent or severely limited

Suppose Marta is painting while the sun is setting; once she notices that the room is getting darker, she decides to call it quits for the day. This example illustrates the role of a(n)________.

just like noticeable difference

Figure-ground relationships concern the tendency to ________.

perceive objects or figures as existing on a background

The gestalt principle of proximity is the tendency to ________.

perceive objects that are close to each other as part of the same grouping

Perceptions differ from sensations in that:

perceptions depend as much on prior experience as they do on neural cues traveling between receptors and the brain.

Similarity is the tendency to perceive __________.

things that look similar as being part of the same group

If you stare at something for a long time, it does not disappear because _______.

tiny movements of the eyes keep them from adapting to what they see.

Perception is the

process by which people take all the sensations they experience at any given moment and interpret them in some meaningful fashion

Research involving illusions _______.

provides valuable information about how the sensory receptors and sense organs work

One problem with the use of subliminal perception in advertising is that ________.

research suggests that it does not work in influencing voluntary behaviors

Suppose you look at a given figure and decide that, depending on how you look at it, it can be perceived as either an old woman or a young lady. Such a figure would be said to be ________

reversible

Detecting "environmental stimulation" is one way to define ________.

sensation

You are drinking a strong cup of coffee that is particularly bitter. After a while, the coffee doesn't taste as strong as it did when you first tasted it. What has happened?

sensory adaptation

If you are experiencing habituation, _______.

sensory receptors are still responding to stimuli.

The saying, "Birds of a feather flock together" is most closely aligned with the ________ principle of perceptual organization.

similarity

Which of the following statements is true?

Both the absolute threshold and the difference threshold vary from person to person over time

________ involves the detection of physical stimuli from our environment and is made possible by the activation of specific receptor cells.

Sensation

"Sensation is to ________ as perception is to ________."

gathering; understanding

After being in class for a while, ____________ is a likely explanation for not hearing the sound of the lights buzzing above you until someone says something about it.

habituation