Psychology test
Which of the following visual processes provides humans the ability to distinguish between different shapes, angles, and moving objects?
Feature detection
David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel won the Nobel prize for their work on
Feature detectors
Which of the following does signal detection theory BEST help explain?
why an alert security guard is more likely to hear a faint noise at 4 am than somebody crossing the lobby after a late night of studying
In which of the following experiments would Gustav Fechner have been MOST likely to participate?
Asking subjects to report each time the notice the presence of a new smell.
In the ear, the process of transaction occurs in the
Cochlea
When Evelyn goes to the farmer's market, she picks out yellow, green, and red apples. That night, even though her kitchen is dimly lit, she easily identifies the green apple she wants for a snack. This can best be explained by
Color constancy
Which of the following researchers is BEST known for his or her work with the noticeable difference in stimulation and its relationship to the stimulation being judged?
Ernst Weber
The initial understanding that the mind is capable of measurement through the use of sensation and perception is attributed to which 19th Century psychologist?
Gustav Fechner
Which of the following individuals is BEST known for their research of absolute thresholds?
Gustav Fechner
Which of the following is located in the middle ear?
Hammer
The Homunculus is a visual representation of the brain that takes the form of a human In the Homunculus, the sizes of body parts are proportional to the sizes of the sensory areas of the brain related to those body parts. The largest part of the Homunculus is therefore the
Hands
Selena was recently diagnosed with spinal meningitis. After days of having a high fever, Selena was left with complete deafness in her left ear. Her doctor explained that Selena was suffering from sensorineural hearing loss. Which part of her ear was MOST likely damaged and caused her sensorineural hearing loss?
Her cochlea
Max was involved in a train accident in which he suffered brain damage. While recovering at the hospital, he notices he cannot smell his tapioca pudding although his other senses are intact. Which of the following brain structures was most likely damaged in Max's accident?
Hippocampus
While sitting in class, Joon feels a slight tickle on hid forearm. He looks down and sees a stray hair that has caused the sensation. He removes the hair and scratches the area. What receptors were activated when the hair landed on his arm?
Meissner's corpuscles
Jamar is riding in the back seat of a car and presses against the window. When he does so, he notices the fence on the side of the road is zipping along quickly, but the house in the distance is not moving much. What is Jamar observing?
Motion parallax
Gerald was investigating the impact that human senses have on memory. In studying the neural processing pathway of each of the five basic senses, he found one sense's pathway traveled through the amygdala and then the hippocampus where memories are processed. Which sense did Gerald find traveling through the hippocampus?
Olfactory sense
Which of the following is an example of embodied cognition?
Omar holds his baby nephew against his chest and feels warmth and connection with the child.
Which of the following is the correct order in which a deep pressure stimulus is processed?
Pacinian corpuscles - afferent neurons - sensorimotor cortex - efferent neurons
When Karen looks at an object, her brain is able to organize the sensory information and she can recognize that the object is a flower. What is this process called?
Perception
Angelique's psychology teacher, Mrs. Murphy, always makes students get out of their seats to participate in demonstrations. Today was Angelique's turn. Mrs. Murphy had Angelique face the class, close her eyes, and touch her fingers to her nose. Angelique was so nervous and embarrassed that she forgot to ask what the demonstration was supposed to show. What was Mrs. Murphy trying to show her class by using Angelique?
Proprioception
After exiting a pinning carnival ride, an individual has difficulty walking upright snd feels as though they are going to fall over. This effect is caused by the disruption of the
Semicircular canals
When Karen looks at an object, her sensory receptors detect the color and shape. What is this process called?
Sensation
After listening to your music at high-volume for 15 minutes, you fail to realize how loud the music is actually blasting. Which concept does this BEST illustrate?
Sensory adaptation
Sally loves reality shows about musical talent. She wishes she had perfect pitch. What she does not know is that when a tiny wave of cochlear fluid stimulates a certain spot on her basilar membrane, a signal is sent to her brain that interprets it as "pitch." Which process BEST describes what is happening in Sally's ear as she hears things?
Spatial coding
Kiera was studying for an important French exam and felt stressed. She went to the kitchen to get a snack and felt drawn to more salty and sugary snacks. Which of the following choices best explains why Kiera might want a sweet or salty snack?
Sweet and salty foods have more carbohydrates that release the neurotransmitter serotonin, which has a calming effect.
A police siren begins to sound as jerry is walking down the street. Jerry's brain converts the sound waves into neural impulses which allows him to hear the noise through a process called
Transduction
Ahmet is amazed to learn that vision is the result of light rays that pass through the eyes and are processed by the brain. The process through which light is converted into neural signals through the brain to understand is called
Transduction
The process by which the senses collect energy from the environment and turn it into information the brain can interpret is called
Transduction5
Jenna cannot perceive the difference between shades of green versus red. Which theory would BEST explain her colorblindness?
Trichromatic theory
Which of the following is MOST true about human sensation?
We can be affected by stimuli that we are unaware of having sensed.
A group of friends are going star gazing. Valentina is super excited and thinks she sees something when there is nothing there. In signal detection theory, Valentina's mistake is
A false alarm
Which of the following BEST describes a subliminal message?
A subliminal message is below one's absolute threshold for awareness.
As you focus your eyes to read this question, you may feel a slight tugging sensation as muscles in your eye change the shape of the lens.
Accommodation
Carlos was recently bragging that he has a better sense of sight and smell than his friend Jason. He is able to smell things that have less of an odor and see things that are not as bright. Which sensory perception concept best explains Carlos's ability to see or smell things sooner than Jason?
Carlos has a lower absolute threshold for sight and smell than Jason.
When Bella was at a restaurant with her friends, she failed to notice the difference when her first waiter left to go on a break and a second waiter took his place. Bella's failure to notice the change in waiters is an example of
Change blindness
Although Sarah is sitting among hundreds of people at a football game, she can focus on one person's voice as she engages in a conversation. Which of the following phenomena does this scenario best illustrate?
Cocktail party effect
Mrs. Gabriel was teaching a lesson on ethics and she had the students form groups of four to discuss their feelings about a controversial topic. Although the classroom got very loud, Mrs. Gabriel was able to hear her name from across the classroom when a student needed help. Which of the following BEST describes this phenomenon?
Cocktail party effect
Timmy moved to a different school over the summer. At his last school, he had a very strict teacher that he was afraid of because she would yell at the class all of the time. When he came to his new school and sat in class on he first day, he perceived his new teacher as angry and strict as well, even though she was just going over the school rules that all teachers had to discuss on the first day. What influenced Timmy's mistaken perception?
Perceptual set
When Tommy visited the amusement park in town, he was amazed at all the moving lights. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that the lights were not actually moving but instead were a series of lights blinking one after another. Which of the following concepts explains this illusion?
Phi phenomenon
An evolutionary psychologist is studying the impact of the basic tastes on human survival. Which of the following taste source traits are most associated with bitter and sour tastes?
Potentially toxic or poisonous food
An evolutionary psychologist is studying the impact of basic tastes on human survival. Which of the following taste source traits are most associated with bitter and sour tastes?
Potentially toxic or poisonous food.
If you place your finger on your nose, you will see the tip of your finger but not the tip of your nose. Which sensory phenomena BEST explains the apparent invisibility from your visual field?
Sensory habituation
Juan was recently diagnosed with appendicitis and had surgery to remove his appendix. His primary symptom came in the form of extreme pain in his lower right abdominal region. Juan described his pain as if "a bomb had exploded inside him". This type of pain is a sensory input produced by
Visceral nocioreceptors
A sensation is the process of turning physical energy like light, pressure, or sound, into neural signals that travel from the sensory system to the brain. Which term BEST describes this process?
transduction
An astigmatism is caused by
Irregularities in the shape of the cornea
Peony is collecting seashells. She doesn't notice that the beach is slowly getting darker until the sun is almost below the horizon and night has nearly fallen. Why did Peony NOT notice the changing light?
The small changes in light were below her difference threshold
Which of the following best describes the Gestalt principle of figure-ground?
The tendency to look for contrast between images in the foreground and their background
Jamal has read about the benefits of yoga and has begun to incorporate it into his workout routine. After a month he has noticed that his ability to balance on one foot has improved dramatically. In this case, Jamal is noticing a change in his
Vestibular sense
Which of the following would most likely cause sensorineural hearing loss?
Victor works on the flight line of a busy airport where it is extremely loud.
The visual cortex is located in which of the following areas of the brain?
Occipital lobe
Before being transduced into electrochemical messages in the brain, the sensation of taste and smell enter the body as
Chemical compounds
Tiana spent too much time outside and ended up with a painful sunburn across her shoulders and back. Which of the following best explains Tiana's sensation of pain?
Cutaneous nocieoreceptors cause this type of pain
Which team won a Nobel Prize for their research on feature detector cells?
David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel.
Which of the following is the BEST example of an absolute threshold?
From his own room, Eliseo can smell when his sister puts on two squirts of perfume in her bedroom half of the time, but he cannot notice one squirt.
Jessica hears her infant son crying in the middle of the night, even when the sound is faint because she is expecting to hear him. At the same time, she often fails to hear cars that occasionally drive by her house at a louder volume. Which concept BEST explains this phenomenon?
Signal detection theory
When she flies on an airplane , Shana enjoys looking out the window at the city below. Even though the skyscrapers appear very small from the plane window, Shana knows they are huge. The perceptual concept that best explains Shauna's understanding of the buildings' height is
Size consistency
Papillae are visible bumps on the human tongue where taste buds are located. Which of the following best describes the correlation of the number of papillae on one's tongue to taste perception?
The more papillae a person has on their tongue, the stronger a food tastes.
Animals that have excellent night vision are most likely to have
an abundance of rods
Which of the following BEST reflects contemporary beliefs about extrasensory perception (ESP)?
because research supporting ESP cannot be replicated or has design flaws, most psychologists do not believe it exists.
Jane was watching a scary movie with her best friend. During a particularly scary scene, she failed to notice her brother walk into the room until he came up next to her and said "BOO!" Why did Jane fail to notice him?
inattentional blindness caused her to focus on the movie and nothing else
Which of the following is the colored muscle that controls the amount of light that enters the eye ?
iris
Which of the following structures of the eye controls the size of the pupil?
iris
Which of the following is an explanation of why sensory adaptation occurs?
it allows individuals to focus on informative changes taking place in their environment without being distracted by "boring" information
Which of the following is part of the outer ear?
pinna
Feature detection is a perceptual process that involves which of the following?
specialized neurons that allow the brain to respond to specific features of a stimulus
Howard wants to play a trick on his older sister. He first sneaks a rubber snake into her almost-empty purse, but she notices it is heavier immediately and his plan failts. He then puts it into her already full backpack, and she does not realize it until she opens up her bag in English. Why does his sister not notice the extra weight of the snake amidst her school materials when she did notice it next to her car keys in her purse?
the amount required to reach a just-noticeable difference (JND) is not constant; it depends on the difference proportionate to what is already being sensed.
Katie loves to go to her local library and has participated in summer reading programs for several years that are organized by the lead librarian, Mrs. Higgins. Although Katie has known Mrs. Higgins for a long time she failed to recognize her when she was walking down the street during a community art festival. This recognition failure is due to which of the following?
Context effects
One thing all senses have in common is that they all
Convert the information they gather from the environment into neural signals
Which of the following is the CORRECT sequence of anatomical structures through which a light wave passes before it is perceived as vision?
Cornea, pupil, lens, vitreous humor, retina, bipolar cells, ganglion cells, optic nerve, thalamus, visual cortex.
Daisy ate bad mayonnaise and, hours later, became ill. After this incident, Daisy has an aversion to mayonnaise and becomes nauseous at the sight or smell of the condiment. Psychologists would describe Daisy as having a taste aversion to mayonnaise. Which of the following statements best explains what has happened to Daisy?
Daisy has been conditioned to associate the perception of mayonnaise with nausea and no longer enjoys the condiment.
Which of the following researchers, by researching the properties of theurons in the visual cortex of cats, found that nerve cells in the brain respond to specific features of a stimulus?
David Hubel and Torsten Weisel
The 1960s visual cliff experiment by Eleanor Gibson and Richard Walks demonstrated that infants have
Depth perception
When we are required to perform two or more tasks at the same time, such as driving the car and carrying on a conversation, what do we have?
Divided attention
Which of the following is the correct sequence of structures activated in the ear when an individual hears a sound?
Eardrum, anvil, cochlea, auditory nerve.
Who emphasized that in order for a person to detect a difference between two stimuli it was the percentage change that mattered, not the amount?
Ernest Weber
Grandpa John is often irritated by high-pitched sounds, like the squeaky noice his dog's toy makes. Which theory of audition best explains grandpa John's ability to hear those high-pitched sounds?
Place theory
Jameela has been a ballerina since the age of 5. As a high school junior in her school's Psychology program she now has a better understanding of the physical and psychological aspects of ballet. She learns that her awareness of her body in space as she dances is due to her
Proprioceptors
Which of the following BEST explains why a room with an air temperature of 82 degrees may feel cool to someone who has been outside sunbathing but warm to someone who just got out of their air-conditioned car?
Sensory adaptation
Xavier finds the smell of a new restaurant to be very strong at first, but after spending time eating in the restaurant he no longer notices the smell. The process of getting used to a sensory experience is referred to as
Sensory adaptation
When Erdmann opened the door to the locker room, he noticed a strong and unpleasant aroma. However, after a few minutes, he could hardly notice the smell. Which sensory phenomenon BEST explains why Erdmann no longer notices the smell of the locker room?
Sensory adaption
Sally loves reality shows about muscial talent. She wisehs she had perfect pitch. What she does not know is that when a tiny wave of cochlear fluid stimulates a certain spot on her basilar membrane, a signal is sent to her brain that interprets it as "pitch". Which process BEST describes what is happening in Sally's ear as she hears things?
Spatial coding
Which of the following best demonstrates the principle of sensory interaction as it relates to taste?
The influence of how a taco smells on how it tastes
Which of the following best explains how people are perceived to shrink or grown in the Ames Room illusion?
The room appears to be a normal cubic shape, but it is really distorted hexahedron.
Karyme drives by her high school one night. She sees lights shining in the sky above the stadium. Even though she cannot see the field, she concludes there must be a game that evening on campus. Karyme's conclusion is an example of
Top-down processing
Which of the following statements BEST represents perceptual constancy?
We know the brightness of a printed page has not changed as it moves from sunlight to shadow.
Alex can easily tell the difference between a 1-lb bag of flour and 5-lb bag, but he cannot tell the difference between lifting 200 lbs and 205 lbs in the weight room. Which of following explains Alex's inability to determine the heavier weight's differences?
Weber's law
When Karen looks at an object, her sensory receptors detect its color, shape, and smell. Her brain is able to organize the information and she can recognize that the object is a flower. What is this process called?
A combination of sensation and perception
Vertigo is a medical condition in which the sufferer experiences a debilitating combination of dizziness, sensations of spinning, being off-balance, tilting, swaying, nausea, vomiting, and headaches. These symptoms can last hours, days, or even weeks. One cause of this condition is due to an issue with
An imbalance of fluid in the cochlea
Tonya is accustomed to listening to her teacher talk about psychological terms and theories that seem to contradict each other. With spring break and the approaching psychology exam to think about, Tonya is not too focused on anything the teacher is saying. But she immediately notices when the teacher calls her name. Which of the following concepts best describes this situation?
Cocktail party effect
Hubel and Wiesel identified key neurons in the occipital lobe's visual cortex that allow the brain to respond to specifics of a stimulus such as shape, angle, and movement. What are these nerve cells called?
Feature detectors
Danny is looking at an image that his friend told him is an optical illusion. If he focuses on the part printed in black, it looks like a man playing the saxophone. However, if he focuses on the part pointed in white, he sees an image of the moon behind the man. Which of the following gestalt principles explains Danny's ability to see two objects in a single image?
Figure-ground
Which of the following pairs of senses and sites of transduction is correct?
Gustation - Pores on the tongue
While Mr. Powell is teaching a lesson, he fails to notice that a few students in the back of the classroom are off task and playing with their phones. Mr. Powell is MOST clearly suffering from what phenomenon?
Inattention blindness
When 83-year-old Jack's great grandchildren visit, he finds himself having difficulty hearing what they are saying. He can hear his wife, daughter, and son-in-law without any issues. Which of the following BEST explains Jack's inability to hear his great grandchildren?
Jack's great grandchildren speak at a higher frequency than the adult members of his family.
As a toddler, Kalie had very high fevers for several days and lost her sense of hearing. The doctor explained to her parents that the fevers had damaged the cilia in her cochlea. What types of hearing loss did Kalie experience, and what treatment might help restore some of her hearing?
Kalie has had sensorineural hearing loss that can be treated with cochlear implant.
A psychology professor shows the class a series of blinking lights which create the illusion of a moving arrow. The professor notes, "sometimes the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." This statement is a reference to the work of which pair of psychologists?
Max Wertheimer and Wolfgang Köhler.
Which of the following best describes the transduction of chemical odorant molecules to the perception of smell?
Odorant molecules enter the nose and bind themselves to olfactory cell receptors. These receptors transduce the chemical message to an electrochemical message which is then relayed to the smell processing area of the brain via the hippocampus.
Four sensations of touch are
Pain, pressure, warmth, cold
Which of the following monocular cues allows us to perceive objects that appear higher as being further away than those that appear lower in our field of vision?
Relative height
While looking out the window of her car, Shan notices that it looks like the trees and houses in the distance are moving as the car moves. This is an example of
Relative motion
Because she was listening to the news on the television, Ms. Jones did not perceive a word her husband was saying. Which of the following is illustrated in this example?
Selective attention
In a famous experiment, subjects viewed a group of three people in black shirts and a group of three people in white shirts passing a basketball. When asked to count the number of times the team in black passed the ball to each other, most subjects failed to notice a person in a gorilla costume walking across the screen. This experiment illustrates which of the following psychological principles?
Selective attention can make people less sensitive to unexpected changes in their environment.
If you place your finger on your nose, you will see the tip of your finger but not the tip of your nose. Which sensory phenomena best explains the apparent invisibility from you visual field?
Sensory habituation
Which of the following is an example of inattentional blindness?
Sharif is reading a billboard on the side of the road and does not notice a car stop in front of him.
A women, who was never awakened by minor noises at night, now wakes at the slightest sound her newborn baby makes. This is an example of
Signal detection theory
Jared and Geness are parents to newborn baby Annie. Even in a crowded, noisy room, Geness can pick out Annie's faint cry. What term would psychologists use to explain Geness' ability to recognize Annie's cry?
Signal detection theory
The gestalt principle that involves our perception of objects that look alike as being a group instead of individual pieces is know as
Similarity
Freddy cannot wait until the end of class. He leaves class with permission and starts walking in an empty school hallway. Another student enters the hallway and starts walking towards Freddy. As the student walks closer to Freddy, the image of the student on Freddy's retinas gets bigger, but Freddy knows the other student is not actually increasing in size. Which of the follow BEST explains what is happening?
Size constancy
Which pair of researchers proposed that the human eye has three types of color receptors which respond to different wavelengths of light?
Thomas Young and Herman von Helmholtz.
Which of the following best describes the process through which sound waves are converted into neural impulses for the brain to recognize?
Transduction
Oscar Schmidlap was not very smart, but he was strong. His father recognized early where his son's talents lay and instructed Oscar to stay home from school and care for a baby bull. The male calf weighed 85 pounds when it was born. Oscar lifted the bull 10 times each day for the next two weeks. By the end of the second week, the bull weighed 95 pounds, but Oscar didn't feel that it was any heavier than it was on the first day Which term below would account for this situation?
Weber's law
A researcher conducts an experiment using the image above. The researcher instructs individuals to say the color that each word is written in, opposed to reading the word. Many individuals struggle to state the color of each word and instead read the word. This is an example of
how people's minds can get confused between conscious and unconscious processing
Samantha is flipping through her psychology book when she comes across the names of colors in different colored fonts. She follows the book's instructions and tries to say the color of the ink in which the word is typed in instead of simply reading the words. Doing so demonstrates which psychological concept?
how people's minds can get confused between conscious and unconscious processing