LearningCurve 5a. Basic Concepts of Sensation and Perception; Vision

The way in which you quickly group the individual letters in this test item into separate words BEST illustrates the Gestalt principle of _____.

proximity

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

shape constancy.

If a visual image is first presented subliminally, the chance of a person later recognizing the same briefly presented image is improved. This BEST illustrates:

that information can be processed outside of conscious awareness.

Perceptual analysis that is guided by higher-level mental processes such as expectations is called _____ processing.

top-down

Researchers Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walk placed infants on the edge of a safe canyon to determine whether crawling infants and newborn animals can perceive depth. This famous experimental setup is known as the _____ cliff.

visual

Mia is attracted to a man she is chatting with in a nightclub. What is probably happening to her eyes?

Her pupils are dilating.

Your 8-year-old cat Minnie ran away, got into a neighbor's cellar, and was stuck there for two months. Luckily, there was enough food and water in the basement for Minnie to survive. However, it was pitch black. When your neighbor returned from her two-month vacation, she found Minnie and returned her to you. How will this sensory deprivation affect Minnie's vision?

Her vision will be unaffected by this sensory deprivation.

_____ refers to the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information.

Perception

Which statements is TRUE?

There is no clear boundary between the processes of sensation and perception as we experience them.

Proposed by _____, _____ theory was the first major account of color vision.

Young and von Helmholtz; trichromatic

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 principle of:

closure

As you watch a dog play in the park, light reflected from the dog's fur first passes through three structures of your eye. In what order does the light pass through these structures?

cornea, pupil, lens

Your 7-month-old niece is just learning to crawl. Your sister has agreed to have her participate in an experiment that incorporates a visual cliff. What is MOST likely being studied in this experiment?

depth perception

According to the textbook, desirable objects are perceived as closer than neutral objects. In an experiment examining this phenomenon, the perceived distance of the objects is a(n) _____ variable in this study.

independent

As you walk into a brightly lit room, the black structure in the center of your eye seems to shrink to a tiny black dot. This response is caused by the action of the eye structure called the:

iris

The ring of muscle tissue that controls the pupil's size is called the:

iris

You read about an accident at a railroad crossing and wonder about the cause. Perhaps the car's driver overestimated the distance of the train because the parallel tracks stimulated the monocular depth cue of _____.

linear perspective

The thin layer of receptors at the back of the eye is called the:

retina

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

sensation

Marc is driving his 12-year-old car. He notices a sound coming from the engine, which involves _____ processing. He immediately starts thinking that the sound is similar to the sound his car made the last time he had it repaired, which involves _____ processing.

sensation; perception

Afterimages are BEST explained by _____-process theory.

opponent