5a. Basic Concepts of Sensation and Perception; Vision

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

umami

Roast beef with a rich brown gravy is often described as a "savory" dish. The basic taste prominent in such a dish is:

umami

You wake up early in the morning and your room is fairly dark. You look over and see your shirt hanging on a hook. You know it's your red shirt because you hung it up there before you went to bed, but in the dark you can't see its color. It looks dark gray to you. Why is that?

In the dim light, the cones in your eyes are ineffectual.

_____ refers to the level of energy in a light wave, which we perceive as brightness, as determined by the wave's amplitude.

Intensity

One type of extrasensory perception involves the ability to perceive remote events, an ability called:

clairvoyance

Even when seen through sunglasses, grass appears equally as green as it does without glasses. This BEST illustrates color _____.

constancy

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

Lily is riding her bicycle and, after the fortieth mile, she has one last hill to climb. As compared with the other hills she has climbed on her ride, Lily is likely to perceive this last hill as:

higher

Snakes can detect infrared waves radiated by the bodies of their prey. As compared with humans, snakes can see _____ waves.

higher-wavelength

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

monocular

James is threading a needle under a bright light bulb. During this task, James' vision is driven mainly by the _____ in his _____.

cones; fovea

Eleanor suffered severe stroke damage near the rear of both sides of her brain. Based on the case study of "Mrs. M." described in the textbook, the stroke is MOST likely to impair Eleanor's ability to perceive:

movement

Janice opens her eyes in the morning to see a photograph by her bedside. At that point, her 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

Concept Practice:

Perceptual Set

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

Her pupils are dilating.

When we see the mouth movements for "ga" while hearing "ba" we may perceive "da." This BEST illustrates the _____ effect.

McGurk

_____ is the ability to perceive future events.

Precognition

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.

Seeing the numeral 3, for instance, may evoke a particular taste sensation in a condition called:

Synaesthesia

5b

The Nonvisual Senses; Sensory Interaction; ESP

Morrie has had a cold for five days, and his nose is so stuffy that he cannot smell anything. When he goes to drink your coffee, he finds that it is tasteless. What is the MOST likely reason for this?

To savor a taste, we need to breathe the aroma through our nose.

perceptual set

an expectation of what will be perceived influences what is actually perceived

After a rap concert, as Dominique walks out into the fresh air, she notices her ears are ringing. This ringing indicates possible damage to the hair cells of her _____ membrane.

basilar

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

fovea

The cortical area important for the perception of taste is the border between the _____ lobe and the _____ lobe.

frontal; temporal

As Ted walks through a park, he hears the sound of a dog barking and is able to recognize the direction of the sound and if the dog is nearby. Ted is able to do this because:

he has two ears and the sound will travel to the ear nearest to the sound first.

The sense of _____ is called audition.

hearing

In an experiment described in the textbook, preschool children preferred the taste of French fries served in a McDonald's bag to the taste of identical fries served in a plain white bag. The type of bag is a(n) _____ variable in this study.

independent

The sensory experience of bending one's knees or raising one's arms BEST illustrates the sense of:

kinesthesia

You are playing "Ring Around the Rosie" with your little cousins and are spinning around and around. When you stop you still feel as though you are spinning because your semicircular canals and _____ receptors haven't returned to their neutral state.

kinesthetic

Randy is playing the piano. His left hand plays notes that are _____ in _____ than does his right hand.

lower; frequency

An injury could stimulate _____, specialized receptors that can detect hurtful temperatures, pressure, or chemicals.

nociceptors

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

perceptual set; context

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

proximity

The adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters is called the _____

pupil

You are playing "Ring Around the Rosie" with your little cousins and are spinning around and around. When you stop you still feel as though you are spinning because your _____ canals and kinesthetic receptors haven't returned to their neutral state.

semicircular

There is no scientific support for extrasensory perception. With respect to the distinction between sensation and perception, that means that:

sensation is necessary for perception.

After many years of playing extremely loud rock music, Kyle has suffered significant hearing loss, which cannot be corrected with a hearing aid. Kyle is suffering from _____ hearing loss.

sensorineural

The middle ear contains a structure called the:

stirrup

The flavor of a food is due to:

the combination of aroma, taste, and texture.

The phenomenon of perceptual set underscores the contribution of _____ processes to perception.

top-down

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

transduction

top-down processing

using existing knowledge or beliefs to interpret the sensory information, leading to faster perception but also to errors

With respect to the sensory systems, the cerebellum is involved in the:

vestibular sense and kinesthesia

Stacy is participating in a local psychology experiment in which the research assistant asks Stacy to hold two pencils in front of her and touch the tips together. She then asks Stacy to do this with one eye closed. Stacy finds this terribly difficult, which demonstrates the importance of:

binocular cues.

thomas was having a painful dental procedure. His dentist performed the most painful portion of the procedure first and then performed the less painful portion of the procedure. According to research on memories of pain, Thomas is:

likely to have a memory in which he recalls the less painful procedure more than the more painful procedure.

When people look at a photograph of an adult-child pair and are told that the two individuals are parent and child, the people tend to say the pair looks more alike than people who are told the pair is unrelated. This is MOST likely due to:

perceptual sets.

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

bottom-up processing

raw input from the sensory systems in order to construct a perception of the outside world