AP Psych: Unit 4: Sensation and Perception

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4-19 A teacher used distortion goggles, which shifted the wearer's gaze 20 degrees, to demonstrate an altered perception. A student wearing the goggles initially bumped into numerous desks and chairs while walking around. After 30 minutes of wearing the goggles, he was able to smoothly avoid obstacles, illustrating the concept of...

Perceptual adaptation

Unit 4 Our tendency to see faces in clouds and other ambiguous stimuli is partly based on what perception principle?

Perceptual set

4-19 What do we call the illusion of movement that results from two or more stationary, adjacent light blinking on and off in quick succession?

Phi phenomenon

4-21 Touch source

Pressure, warmth, cold, pain on the skin

Unit 4 Two monocular depth cues are most responsible for our ability to know that jet flying overhead is at an elevation of several miles. One cue is relative size. What is the other?

Relative motion.

4-21 Vision receptors

Rods and cones in the retina

4-18 How do the eye and the brain process visual information?

- After processing by bipolar and ganglion cells in the eyes' retina, neural impulses travel through the optic nerve, to the thalamus, and on to the visual cortex-in the visual cortex, feature detectors respond to specific features of the visual stimulus-supercell clusters in other critical brain areas respond to more complex patterns - Through parallel processing, the brain handles many aspects of vision simultaneously; other neural teams integrate the results, comparing them with stored information and enabling perceptions

4-16 Explain how bottom-up and top-down processes work together to help us decipher the world around us.

- Bottom-up processing starts at the sensory receptors and works up to higher levels of processing - Top-down processing constructs perceptions from the sensory input by drawing on our experience and expectations

4-17 How can context effects, emotions, and motivation trigger different perceptions of a single stimulus?

- Context effects: Environmental factors can influence perception. For example, a tall basketball player might look short when standing next to a much taller player - Emotion: Mood can influence perception. For example, happy or sad music can alter one's perception of ambiguous words and scenes - Motivation: Motivation can influence perception. For example, a water bottle can seem closer when one is thirsty.

4-20 What theories help us understand pitch perception?

- Place theory explains how we hear high-pitched sounds, and frequency theory explains how we hear low-pitched sounds (A combination of the two theories explains how we hear pitches in the middle range) - Place theory proposes that our brain interprets a particular pitch by decoding the place where a sound wave stimulates the cochlea's basilar membrane - Frequency theory proposes that the brain deciphers the frequency of the neural impulses traveling up the auditory nerve to the brain

4-18 What theories help us understand color vision?

- Trichromatic theory proposed that the retina contains three types of color receptors; contemporary research has found three types of cones, each most sensitive to the wavelengths of one of the three primary colors of light - Opponent process theory proposed three additional color processes; contemporary research has confirmed that, en route to the brain, neurons in the retina and the thalamus code the color-related information from the cones into pairs of opponent colors - These theories show that color processing occurs in two stages

4-16 How much information do we consciously attend to at once?

- We selectively attend to, and process, a very limited portion of incoming information, blocking out much and often shifting the spotlight of our attention from one thing to another - Focused intently on one task, we often display inattentional blindness (including change blindness) to other events and changes around us

4-16 Ask Yourself Can you recall a recent time when, your attention focused on one thing, you were oblivious to something else (perhaps to pain, to someone's approach, or to background music)?

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4-17 Ask Yourself Can you recall a time when your expectations have predisposed how you perceived a person (or group of people)?

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4-17 Ask Yourself Have you ever had what felt like an ESP experience? Can you think of an explanation other than ESP for that experience?

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4-18 Ask Yourself If you were forced to give up one sense, which would it be? Why?

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4-19 Ask Yourself Try drawing a realistic depiction of the scene from your window. Which monocular cues will you use in your drawing?

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4-20 Ask Yourself If you are a hearing person, imagine that you had been born deaf. Do you think your life would be different?

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4-21 Ask Yourself Have you ever experienced a feeling that you think could be explained by embodied cognition?

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4-18 Summarize visual information processing

1) Scene 2) Retinal processing - receptor rods and cones - bipolar cells - ganglion cells 3) Feature detection - brain's detector cells respond to specific features (edges, lines, angles) 4) Parallel processing - brain cell teams process combined information about motion, form, depth, color 5) Recognition - brain interprets constructed image based on information from stored images

4-18 Explain two theories of color vision in humans. How does one of them explain color deficiency?

1) Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory: The theory that the retina contains three different color receptors; when the color receptors are stimulated in combination, it can produce the perception of any color 2) Opponent-process theory: The theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision; some cells are stimulated by a certain color and inhibited by another.

4-20 What three theories help us understand pitch perception?

1) place theory 2) frequency theory 3) volley principle

4-16 All of our senses do what three things?

1) receive sensory stimulation, often using specialize receptor cells 2) transform that stimulation into neural impulses 3) deliver the neural information to our brain

4-21 Memories' snapshots record what two factors of pain?

1) their pain's peak moment (which can lead them to recall variable pain with peaks as worse) 2) how much pain they felt at the end

4-18 What do we call the specialized neurons in the occipital lobe's visual cortex that respond to particular edges, lines, angles, and movements?

Feature detectors

Unit 4 Neurons that fire in response to specific edges, lines, angles, and movements are called what?

Feature detectors

4-19 Bryanna and Charles are in a dancing competition. It is easy for spectators to see them against the dance floor because of

Figure-ground relationships

4-21 Test Yourself How does our system for sensing smell differ from our sensory systems for vision, touch, and taste?

First there are three types of color recruits for the vision sensory system. There are four touch senses and there are five taste sensations. Our system for seeing smell differs from other senses beaus there are no basic smell recruits. There are many different odor receptors that allow us to recognize smells because they send messages to the brain

4-19 Explain the meaning of the word gestalt as it applies to perception. Then, apply any two gestalt principles to the perception of food on a plate.

Gestalt is when we tend to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes. We tend to group our food into different categories such as meats, vegetables, and carbs.

4-19 Test Yourself What do we mean when we say that, in perception, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts"?

Gestalt psychologists used this saying to describe our perceptual tendency to organize clusters of sensations into meaningful forms or coherent groups. Depth perception.

4-21 Body movement—vestibular sense receptors

Hairlike receptors in the semicircular canals and vestibular sacs

4-16 Test Yourself Explain how Heather Sellers' experience of prosopagnosia illustrates the difference between sensation and perception.

Heather Sellers' sensation is normal, and her perception is nearly so, but her brain is lacking the functional area that helps us recognize a familiar human face. While her bottom-up physical sensory system receives and represents stimuli, a problem with her top-down mental process of organizing and interpreting sensory input results in her inability to recognize faces.

4-21 Sensing the position and movement of individual body parts is an example of what sense?

Kinesthetic

4-21 Body position—kinesthesia receptors

Kinesthetic sensors all over the body

4-21 Body movement—vestibular sense

Movement of fluids in the inner ear caused by head/body movement

4-17 Test Yourself What is the field of study that researches claims of extrasensory perception (ESP)?

Parapsychology is the study of paranormal phenomena, including extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis

Unit 4 Which of the following best represents an absolute threshold? a. A guitar player knows that his D string has just gone out of tune b. A photographer can tell the natural light available for a photograph has just faded slightly c. Your friend amazes you by correctly identifying unlabeled glasses of Coke and Pepsi d. A cook can just barely taste the salt she has added to her soup e. Your mom throws out the milk because she says the taste is "off"

d. A cook can just barely taste the salt she has added to her soup.

4-18 Your best friend decides to paint her room an extremely bright electric blue. Which of the following best fits the physical properties of the color's light waves? a. No wavelength; large amplitude b. Short wavelength; large amplitude c. Short wavelength; small amplitude d. Long wavelength; large amplitude e. No wavelength; small amplitude

d. Long wavelength; large amplitude

4-17 Which of the following is produced by perceptual set? a. Not noticing that the songs change in a restaurant b. Noticing a difference in the weight of a friend fromone week to the next c. Moving an arm quickly so that a mosquito flies away d. Surprise at hearing an Oklahoma cowboy speak with a British accent e. Not noticing a watch on your wrist as the daygoes on

d. Surprise at hearing an Oklahoma cowboy speak with a British accent

Unit 4 Which perception process are the hammer, anvil, and stirrups involved in? a. Processing intense colors b. Processing information related to our sense of balance c. Supporting a structural frame to gold the eardrum d. Transmitting sound waves to the cochlea e. Holding hair cells that enable hearing

d. Transmitting sound waves to the cochlea

4-20 The three small bones of the ear are located in the a. cochlea b. outer ear c. inner ear d. middle ear e. auditory nerve

d. middle ear

4-20 Pitch depends on which of the following? a. amplitude of a sound wave b. number of hair cells stimulated c. strength of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve d. number of sound waves that reach the ear in a given time e. decibels of a sound wave

d. number of sound waves that reach the ear in a given time

4-16 What occurs when experiences influence our interpretation of data? a. selective attention b. transduction c. bottom-up processing d. top-down processing e. signal detection theory

d. top-down processing

4-19 Brightness (lightness) constancy

depends on context; we perceive an object as having a constant brightness even while its illumination varies; depends on relative luminance

4-19 Monocular cues

depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone; how we judge whether a person is 10 or 100 meters away (retinal disparity won't help because there won't be much of a difference between images on left and right retinas)

4-19 Binocular cues

depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes

4-16 Sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation; when we are constantly exposed to a stimulus that does not change, we become less aware of it because our nerve cells fire less frequently; reduces our sensitivity; offers an important benefit: freedom to focus on informative changes in our environment without being distracted by background chatter; *we perceive the world not exactly how it is, but as it is useful or us to perceive it* ex) neighbor's odor; move watch up your wrist

4-19 Perceptual is not merely a projection of the world onto our brain, rather our sensations are...

disassembled into information bits that our brain, using bottom-up and top-down processing, then reassembles into its own functional model of the external world; during this reassembly process, our assumptions can lead us astray... our brain constructs our perceptions

4-18 Feature detectors

discovered by David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel; nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement; specialized neurons in the occipital lobe's visual cortex; receive information from individual ganglion cells in retina; derive their name from ability to respond to scene's specific features; pass information to other cortical areas, where supercell clusters respond to more complex patterns

4-21 Which of the following is the best example of kinesthesia? a. Awareness of the smell of freshly brewed coffee b. Ability to feel pressure on your arm c. Ability to hear a softly ticking clock d. Ability to calculate where a kicked soccer ball will land from the moment it leaves your foot e. Awareness of the position of your arms when swimming the backstroke

e. Awareness of the position of your arms when swimming the backstroke

4-16 What principle states that to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a minimum percentage rather than a constant amount? a. absolute threshold b. different threshold c. signal detection theory d. priming e. Weber's law

e. Weber's law

4-16 Tyshane went swimming with friends who did not want to get into the pool because the water felt cold. Tyshane jumped in and after a few minutes declared, "It was cold when I first got in, but now my body is used to it. Come on in!" Tyshane body became accustomed to the water due to a. perceptual set b. absolute threshold c. difference threshold d. selective attention e. sensory adaption

e. sensory adaption

4-17 Perceptions are influenced, top-down, not only by our expectations and by the context, but also by our _______ and ________

emotions; motivation

4-16 Change blindness

failing to notice changes in the environment; form of inattention blindness; magicians selectively rivet our attention to their left hand's dramatic act, so we fail to notice changes made with their other hand; out of sight out of mind

4-16 Inattentional blindness

failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere; at the level of conscious awareness, we are "blind" to all but a tiny sliver of visual stimuli; by-product of focusing attention on some part of our environment; change blindness and choice blindness are types of inattention blindness ex) magicians manipulating selective attention

4-18 Describe the path a single light-energy particle takes in your eye

first make your way through retinas outer layer of cells to its buried receptor cells (rods and cones); there would see light energy trigger chemical changes that would spark neural signals, activating bipolar cells; bipolar cells activate ganglion cells that have axons that form optic nerve; optic nerve carries information to the brain, where thalamus distributes information

4-18 What helps a soccer goalkeeper anticipate the direction of an impeding kick, and a driver anticipate a pedestrian's next movement?

for biologically important objects and events, brains have a vast visual encyclopedia distributed as specialized cells; these cells respond to one type of stimulus, such as a specific gaze, head angle, posture, or body movement; other supercell clusters integrate this information and fire only when the cues collectively indicate the direction of someone's attention and approach

4-20 Sensorineural hearing loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the cochlea's hair receptor cells or to the auditory nerves; also called nerve deafness; occasionally disease cause sensorineural hearing loss, but more often is caused by biological changes linked with heredity, aging, and prolonged exposure to ear-splitting noise or music

4-20 Conduction hearing loss

hearing loss caused by damage to the mechanical system that conducts sound waves to the cochlea

4-20 Decibels

how we measure sounds; 0 decibels reprensora absolute threshold for hearing

4-21 McGurk effect

if we see a speaker saying one syllable while we hear another, we may perceive a third syllable that blends both inputs; seeing the mouth movements for ga while hearing ba, we may perceive da

4-17 Explain how the brain working backward in time allows a later stimulus to determine how we perceive an earlier one.

imagine hearing a noise interrupted by "eel is on the wagon"; you would perceive first word as "wheel"; given "eel is on the orange", you would hear "peel" - discovered by Richard Warren - the context creates an expectation that, top-down, influences our perception

4-18 Explain how cones enable you to perceive color

in dim light, cones become ineffectual, so you see no colors; rods, which enable black and white vision, remain sensitive in dim light; several rods will fuel faint energy output onto a single bipolar cell; thus, cones and rods each provide a special sensitivity: cones to detail and color, rods to faint light

4-21 Embodied cognition

in psychological science, the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgments; illustrate how brain circuits processing our bodily sensations connect with brain circuits responsible for cognition ex) after holding warm drink rather than cold one, people are more likely to rate someone more warmly, feel closer to them, and behave more generously

4-19 Perceptual adaptation

in vision, the ability to adjust to an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field; our perceptual adaptation to changed visual input makes the world seem normal again; humans adapt to distorting lenses quickly

4-18 Explain the visual information processing path

information processing begins in retina's neural layers, which are brain tissue that has migrated to the eye during early fetal development; these layers pass along electrical impulses AND help encode and analyze sensory information; after processing by retina's rods and cones, information travels to bipolar cells, then to ganglion cells, and through their axons making up optic nerve to brain; any given retinal area relays its information to a corresponding location in visual cortex, in the occipital lobe at the back of your brain

4-16 Top-down processing

information processing guided by higher-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our experience and expectations; we interpret what our senses detect

4-20 AP Exam Note that both ______ and ______ travel in waves. In each case, the amplitude and length oof the waves are important

light; sound

4-17 Psychokinesis

mind over matter; levitating a table or influencing the roll of a die

4-17 Telepathy

mind-to-mind connection; one of the most testable and most relevant parapsychological concepts

4-19 Moon illusion

moon looks up to 50% larger when near the horizon than when high in the sky; cues to object's distances make horizon moon appear farther away; if its farther away, our brain assumes, it must be larger than the moon high in the night sky; take away the distance cue by looking at the horizon Moon through a paper tube and the object will immediately shrink

4-21 We seem to perceive *less/more* pain when other seem to be experiencing pain

4-21 Phantom sights

non threatening hallucinations; those who lose vision to glaucoma, cataracts, diabetes, or macular degeneration may experience phantom sights

4-18 When you look at a bright red tulip, what strikes your eyes?

not particles of the color red, but pulses of electromagnetic energy that your visual system perceives as red

4-18 Explain the two stages of color processing

retina's red, green and blue cones respond in varying degrees to different color stimuli (Young-Helmholtz three color theory); their signals are then processed by the nervous system's opponent-process cells (Hering's theory)

4-18 Cones

retinal receptor cells that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions; the cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations; cluster in and around the fovea, the retina's area of central focus; many have their own hotline to the brain: each one transmits to a single bipolar cell that helps relay the cone's individual message to the visual cortex, which devotes a large area to input from the fovea; these direct connections preserve the cones' precise information, making them better able to detect fine detail

4-18 Rods

retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond; have no hotline like the cones... they share bipolar cells with other rods, sending combined messages,

4-21 Nociceptors

sensory receptors that detect harmful temperatures, pressure, or chemicals; there is no one type of stimulus that triggers pain

4-18 Explain afterimages with the flag demonstration

state at a green square for a while, then look at a white sheet of paper, and you will see red (green's opponent color); state at a yellow square and its opponent color blue will appear on white paper; by staring at green, we tire our green response; when we then stare at white (which contains all colors, including red) only the red part of the green-red pairing will fire normally

4-19 Depth perception

the ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance; seems that biology predisposes us to be wary of heights and experience amplifies that fear

4-16 Priming

the activation, often unconsciously, of certain associations, thus predisposing one's perception, memory, or response; under certain conditions you can be affected by stimuli so weak that you don't consciously notice them; an unnoticed image or word can reach your visual cortex (quick) and briefly prime your response to a later question; most times this image or world is quickly flashed then replaced by a masking stimulus that interrupts the brain's processing before conscious perception

4-18 Intensity

the amount of energy in a light or sound wave, which we perceive as brightness or loudness, as determined by the wave's amplitude; one of the two physical characteristics of light that help determine our sensory experience; determined by a wave's amplitude; influences brightness

4-19 Relative luminance

the amount of light an object reflects relative to its surroundings; brightness (lightness) constancy relies on relative luminance

4-20 How do we detect loudness?

the brain can interpret loudness from the NUMBER of activated hair cells; really loud sounds may seem loud to people with or without normal hearing because if a hair cell loses sensitivity to soft sounds, it may still respond to loud sounds

4-18 Fovea

the central focal (central focus area of retina) point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster

4-20 Middle ear

the chamber between the eardrum and cochlea containing three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) that concentrate the vibrations of the eardrum on the cochlea's oval window

4-17 Extrasensory perception (ESP)

the controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input; includes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition

4-18 Hue

the dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth

4-18 Wavelength

the distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next; electromagnetic wavelengths vary from the short blips of cosmic rays to the long pulses of radio transmission; one of two physical characteristics of light that help determine our sensory experience; *determines the hue (the color we experience*

4-16 Selective attention

the focusing on conscious awareness on a particular stimulus; extends into sleep ex) cocktail party effect: your ability to attend to only one voice among many (while also being able to detect your name in an unattended voice)

4-18 Explain why, when driving, you can detect a car in your peripheral vision well before perceiving its details

the image strikes the outer regions of your retina, where rods predominate; rods do not have a hotline like cones to the brain; they share bipolar cells with other rods, sending combined messages; detecting something in peripheral vision well before perceiving its details with cones

4-20 Inner ear

the innermost part of the ear, containing the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs

4-18 Retina

the light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information; lens focuses incoming rays into an image on the retina; multilayered tissue on the eyeball's sensitive inner surface; doesn't see a whole image... its millions of receptor cells convert particles of light energy into neural impulses and forward those to the brain; there, impulses are reassembled into a perceived, upright seeming image

4-16 Difference threshold

the minimum difference between two stimuli required for detection 50 percent of the time; we experience the difference threshold as a just noticeable difference (or jnd); to function effectively, we need absolute thresholds low enough to allow us to detect important sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells, and also detect small differences among stimuli (difference threshold); increases with the size of the stimulus; if you add 1 ounce to a 10 ounce weight, you will detect the difference, but if you add 1 ounce to a 100 ounce weight you probably will not

4-16 Absolute threshold

the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular light, sound, pressure, taste, or odor 50 percent of the time; to function effectively, we need absolute thresholds low enough to allow us to detect important sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells, and also detect small differences among stimuli (difference threshold)

4-18 Optic nerve

the nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain

4-20 Frequency

the number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a given time (for example, per second); determines the pitch we experience; long waves have low frequency and low pitch; short waves have high frequency and high pitch

4-19 Figure-ground

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground); in our eye-brain system, our first perceptual task is to perceive any object (the figure) as distinct from its surroundings (the ground); as you read, the words are the figure, and the white paper is the ground; sometimes the same stimulus can trigger more than one perception; figure-ground relationship continually reverses, but we always organize the stimulus into a figure seen against a ground

4-19 Grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups; our minds bring order and form to stimuli by following certain rules for grouping; these rules illustrate how the perceived whole differs from the sum of its parts: 1) Proximity - we group nearby figures together; we don't see six separate lines, but three sets of two lines 2) Continuity - we perceive smooth, continuous patterns rather than discontinuous ones such as seeing two continuous lines instead of semi circles 3) Closure - we fill in gaps to create complete whole object; incomplete circles vs. illusion triangles

4-18 Blind spot

the point at which the optic nerve leaves the eye, creating a "blind" spot because no receptor cells are located there

4-21 Sensory interaction

the principle that one sense may influence another, as when the smell of food influences its taste; smell + texture + taste = flavor; almost imperceptible flicker of light is more easily visible when accompanied by a short burst of sound; sound may be easier to hear with a visual cue; the eyes guide the ears (ex. closed captioning); brain can combine simultaneous touch and visual signals thanks to neurons projecting from somatosensory cortex back to the visual cortex

4-16 Weber's law

the principle that, to be perceived as different, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum percentage (rather than a constant amount); for an average person to perceive a difference, two stimuli must differ by a constant minimum *percentage* (not a constant amount); the exact proportion varies depending on the stimulus; relates to difference threshold

4-16 Sensation

the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment; sensation and perception blend into one continuous process

4-18 Accommodation

the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina

4-16 Perception

the process of organizing and interpreting sensory information, enabling us to recognize meaningful objects and events; sensation and perception blend into one continuous process

4-18 Parallel processing

the processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions, including vision; contrasts with the step-by-step (serial) processing of most computers and of conscious problem solving; to analyze a visual scene, the brain divides it into subdimensions (motion, form, depth, color) and works on each aspect simultaneously; we then construct our perceptions by integrating the separate but parallel work of these different visual teams ex) to recognize a face, your brain integrates information projected by your retinas to several visual cortex areas, compares it with stored information, and enables you to recognize the face

4-17 True or false: Desired objects, such as a water bottle when thirsty, seem closer

true; emotion and motivation affect perceptions; perceptual bias energizes our going for it

4-20 How do we locate sounds?

two ears better for one because if car to right honks, your right ear receives a more *intense* sound and it receives sound slightly *sooner* than left ear; sound waves strike one ear sooner and more intensely than the other; the brain analyzes the minute differences in the sounds received by the two ears and computes the sound's source

4-16 Choice blindness

type of inattention blindness; Swedish supermarket, people tasted two jams, indicated their preference, then tasted again their preferred jam and explained their preference; most people didn't notice they were actually "retesting" their non preferred jam 4

4-20 Explain the mechanical chain reaction that allows us to hear

visible outer ear channels waves through auditory canal to eardrum, a thigh membrane, causing it to vibrate; on the middle ear, three tiny bones (hammer, anvil, stirrup) pick up vibrations and transmit them to the cochlea, a snail-like tube in the inner ear; the incoming vibrations cause cochlea's membrane (oval window) to vibrate, jostling fluid that fills the tube; this motion causes ripples in the basilar membrane, bending the hair cells lining its surface; hair cell movement triggers impulses in the adjacent nerve cells; axons of those cells converge to form the auditory nerve which sends neural messages via thalamus to the auditory cortex in brain's temporal lobe

4-18 Light's _______ is the distance from one wave peak to the next. This dimension determines the _______ we experience?

wavelength; hue

4-19 Shape constancy

we perceive form of familiar objects such as a door, as constant even while our retinas receive changing images of them; brain manages this feat thanks to visual cortex neurons that rapidly learn to associate different views of an object

4-19 Size constancy

we perceive objects as having a constant size, even while our distance from them varies; we assume a car is large enough to carry people, even when we see its tiny image from two blocks away; illustrates close connection between perceived distance and perceived size; perceiving an object's distance gives us cues to its size; knowing its general size (that it is a car) provides us with cues to its distance

4-16 Popout

what we experience when stimuli is so powerful and distinct; when we notice an angry face in a crowd; we don't choose this stimuli, they draw our eye and demand our attention

4-21 Phantom limb sensations

when brain creates pain; when brain misinterprets spontaneous central nervous system activity that occurs in absence of normal sensory input (feeling pain in nonexistent limbs

4-21 Synesthesia

when the sense become joined; where one sort of sensation such as hearing sound produces another such as seeing color; hearing music may activate color sensitive cortex regions and trigger a sensation of color

4-18 Cornea

where light enters the eye; protects the eye and bends light to provide focus; light then passes through the pupil

4-21 Can our brain sense senses without functioning senses?

yes, phantom sounds, sights, smells, taste, etc

4-20 Test Yourself What are the basic steps in transforming sound waves into perceived sound?

The outer ear collects sound waves, which are translated into mechanical waves by the middle ear and turned into fluid waves in the inner ear. The auditory nerve then translates the energy into electrical waves and sends them to the brain, which perceives and interprets the sound

4-19 Retinal disparity

a binocular cue for perceiving depth by comparing images from the retinas in the two eyes, the brain computes distance—the greater the disparity (difference) between the two images, the closer the object; because the eyes are about 2 1/2 inches apart, your retinas receive slightly different images of the world; by comparing these two images, your brain can judge how close an object is to you; the difference between the two images; used to create 3D affect in movies

4-20 Cochlea

a coiled, bony, fluid-filled tube in the inner ear through which sound waves trigger nerve impulses

4-20 Cochlear implant

a device for converting sounds into electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through electrodes threaded into the cochlea; for now the only way to restore hearing for people with nerve deafness; translates sounds into electrical signals that, wired into cochlea's nerves, convert information about sound to brain; cannot enable normal hearing in adults if their brain never learned to process sound during childhood

4-19 Visual cliff

a laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals

4-17 Perceptual set

a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another; a set of mental tendencies and assumptions that greatly affects (top-down) what we perceive; can influence what we hear, taste, feel, and see ---------HEAR - kindly airline pilot who, on a takeoff runway, looked over at depressed co-pilot and said "cheer up" - co-pilot raised wheels before they left the ground because he expected to hear "gears up" --------TASTE - bar patrons tried drinking vinegar-laced beer - thinking it was brand-named beer, they preferred it - when they were told the truth, they experienced a worsened taste

4-21 Sense of touch

a mix of distinct skin senses for pressure, warmth, cold, pain, tickling, itching, wetness, hot

4-18 Iris

a ring of muscle tissue that forms the colored portion of the eye around the pupil and controls the size of the pupil opening; colored muscle that dilates or constricts in response to light intensity and even to inner emotions; each iris is so distinctive that an iris-scanning machine can confirm your identity

4-21 Why can't you tickle yourself?

a self-produced tickle produces less somatosensory cortex activation than does the same tickle from something or someone else

4-16 Signal detection theory

a theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise); assumes there is no single absolute threshold and that detection depends partly on a person's experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness; measured as our ratio of "hits" to "false alarms"; theorists seek to understand why people respond differently to the same stimuli (teachers will students texting in class)

4-20 Pitch

a tone's experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency; long waves have low frequency and low pitch; short waves have high frequency and high pitch

4-21 Which of the following is most closely associated with hairlike receipts in the semicircular canals? a. Body position b. Smell c. Hearing d. Pain e. Touch

a. Body position

Unit 4 Frequency theory relates to which element of the hearing process? a. Rate at which the basilar membrane vibrates b. Number of fibers in the auditory nerve c. Point at which the basilar membrane exhibits the most vibration d. Decibel level of a sound e. Number of hair cells in each cochlea

a. Rate at which the basilar membrane vibrates

4-19 The view from Narmeen's left eye is slightly different from her right eye. This is due to which depth cue? a. Retinal disparity b. Relative size c. Linear perspective d. Relative motion e. Convergence

a. Retinal disparity

4-17 Kimberly tells her brother to put on a suit on a warmsummer day. Kimberly's brother knows to put on aswimsuit instead of a business suit because of a. context b. ESP c. precognition d. bottom-up processing e. clairvoyance

a. context

4-19 Bringing order and form to stimuli, which illustrates how the whole differs from the sum of its parts, is called a. grouping b. monocular cue c. binocular cue d. disparity e. motion

a. grouping

4-16 What do we call the conversion of stimulus energies, like sights and sounds, into neural impulses? a. transduction b. perception c. priming d. signal detection theory e. threshold

a. transduction

4-20 The _______ of sounds waves determines their loudness

amplitude

4-16 Cocktail party effect

an example of selective attention; your ability to attend to only one voice among many (while also being able to detect your name in an unattended voice)

4-19 Phi phenomenon

an illusion of movement created when two or more adjacent lights blink on and off in quick succession

4-16 How do we feel or respond to what we do not know and cannot describe?

an imperceptibly brief stimulus often triggers a weak response that can be detected by brain scanning; only when the stimulus triggers synchronized activity in several brain areas does it reach consciousness; dual-track mind: much of our information processing occurs automatically, out of sight, off the radar screen of our conscious mind

4-19 Gestalt

an organized whole; Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes; when given a cluster of sensations, people tend to organize them into a gestalt

4-16 Bottom-up processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up the brain's integration of sensory information (higher levels of processing); as our brain absorbs information, bottom-up processing enables our sensory systems to detect the lines, angles, and colors that form the flower and leaves

4-21 Which of the following is the best example of sensory interaction? a. Finding that despite its delicious aroma, a weird-looking meal tastes awful b. Finding that food tastes bland when you have a bad cold c. Finding it difficult to maintain your balance when you have an ear infection d. Finding that the cold pool water doesn't feel so cold after a while e.. All oof these are examples

b. Finding that food tastes bland when you have a bad cold

4-20 Which of the following reflects the notion that pitch is related to the number of impulses traveling up the auditory nerve in a unit of time? a. Place theory b. Frequency theory c. Volley principle d. Sound localization e Stereophonic hearing

b. Frequency theory

4-17 What do we call a mental predisposition that influences our interpretation of a stimulus? a. A context effect b. Perceptual set c. Extrasensory perception d. Emotion e. Motivation

b. Perceptual set

Unit 4 Which of the following phrases accurately describes the top down processing? a. The entry-level data captured by our various sensory systems b. The effect that our experiences and expectations have on perception c. Our tendency to scan a visual field from top to bottom d. Our inclination to follow a predetermined set of steps to process sound e. The fact that information is processed by the higher regions of the brain before it reaches the lower brain

b. The effect that our experiences and expectations have on perception

Unit 4 Which of the following is most likely to influence our memory of a painful event? a. The overall length of the event b. The intensity of pain at the end of the event c. The reason for the pain d. The amount of rest you've had in the 24 hours preceding the event e. The specific part of the body that experiences the pain

b. The intensity of pain at the end of the event

4-19 Why would a sunlight black paper viewed through a narrow tube so nothing else is visible may appear gray?

because in bright sunshine it reflects a fear amount of light; view it without tube and it is black again because it reflects much less light than object around it

4-16 Why, if we stare at an object without flinching, does it not vanish from sight?

because our eyes are always moving; this ensures that stimulation on the eyes' receptors continually changes

4-16 Subliminal

below one's absolute threshold for conscious awareness; stimuli you cannot detect 50 percent of the time

4-19 Stroboscopic movement

brain perceives continuous movement in a rapid series of slightly varying images

4-21 What helps explain an odor's power to evoke feelings and memories?

brain's circuitry; hotline runs between brain area receiving information from nose and the brain's ancient limbic centers associated with memory and emotion; when put in a foul-smelling room, people expressed harsher judgements or immoral acts (such as lying or keeping a found wallet) and more negative attitudes toward gay men

Unit 4 Which of the following might result from a disruption of your vestibular sense? a. Inability to detect the position of your arm without looking at it b. Loss of ability to detect bitter tastes c. Dizziness and loss of balance d. An inability to detect pain e. Loss of color vision

c. Dizziness and a loss of balance

Unit 4 Which of the following describes a perception process that the Gestalt psychologists would have been interested in? a. Depth perception and how it allows us to survive in the world b. Why we see an object near us as closer rather than larger c. How an organized whole is from out of its component pieces d. What the smallest units of perception are e. The similarities between shape constancy and size constancy

c. How an organized whole is formed out of its component pieces

Unit 4 Which of the following represents perceptual constancy? a. We recognize the taste of McDonald's food each time we eat it b. In photos of people, the people almost always are perceived as figure and everything else as ground c. We know that the color of a printed page has not changed as it moves from sunlight into shadow d. From the time they are very young, most people can recognize the smell of a dentist's office e. The cold water in a lake doesn't seem so cold after you have been swimming in it for a few minutes

c. We know that the color of a printed page has not changed as it moves from sunlight into shadow

4-16 Natalia adjusts the faucet handle until the water feels slightly warmer that before. The adjustment is an example of a. a subliminal stimulus b. an absolute threshold c. a difference threshold d. signal detection e. Weber's law

c. a difference threshold

4-20 Hair cells in ears

cochlea has 16,000 of them; they deflect tiny bundles of cilia on the tip of a hair cell by the width of an atom and the alert hair cell (thanks to special protein at tip) triggers a neural response; ringing in ears after exposure to loud machinery or music indicates that we have been bad to our hair cells; pain alerts to possible bodily harm, rising of ears alerts us to possibly hearing damage

4-17 Schemas

concepts that can be formed that organize and allow us to interpret unfamiliar information; our pre-existing schemas for old women and young women, for monsters and tree limbs, all influence how we interpret ambiguous sensations with top-down processing; helps determine our perceptual set

4-16 Transduction

conversion of one form of energy into another; in sensation, the transforming of stimulus energies, such as sights, sounds, and smells, into neural impulses our brains can interpret

4-21 Smell receptors

Millions of receptors at top of nasal cavity

4-19 How do we use binocular and monocular cues to perceive the world in three dimensions and perceive motion?

- Depth perception is our ability to see objects in three dimensions and judge distance. The visual cliff and other research demonstrate that many species perceive the world in three dimensions at, or very soon after, birth - Binocular cues, such as retinal disparity, are depth cues that rely on information from both eyes - Monocular cues (such as relative size, interposition, relative height, relative motion, linear perspective, and light and shadow) let us judge depth using information transmitted by only one eye - As objects move, we assume that shrinking objects are retreating and enlarging objects are approaching - A quick succession of images on the retina can create an illusion of movement, as in stroboscopic movement or the phi phenomenon

4-19 What does research on restored vision, sensory restriction, and perceptual adaptation reveal about the effects of experience on perception?

- Experience guides our perceptual interpretations. People blind from birth who gained sight after surgery lack the experience to visually recognize shapes, forms, and complete faces - Sensory restriction research indicates that there is a critical period for some aspects of sensory and perceptual development. Without early stimulation, the brain's neural organization does not develop normally - People given glasses that shift the world slightly to the left or right, or even upside down, experience perceptual adaptation. They are initially disoriented, but they manage to adapt to their new context

4-19 How did the Gestalt psychologists understand perceptual organization, and how do figure-ground and grouping principles contribute to our perceptions?

- Gestalt psychologists searched for rules by which the brain organizes fragments of sensory data into gestalts (from the German word for "whole"), or meaningful forms. In pointing out that the whole may exceed the sum of its parts, they noted that we filter sensory information and construct our perceptions - To recognize an object, we must first perceive it (see it as a figure) as distinct from its surroundings (the ground). We bring order and form to stimuli by organizing them into meaningful groups, following such rules as proximity, continuity, and closure

4-16 What are the absolute and difference thresholds, and do stimuli below the absolute threshold have any influence on us?

- Our absolute threshold for any stimulus is the minimum stimulation necessary for us to be consciously aware of it 50 percent of the time. Signal detection theory predicts how and when we will detect a faint stimulus amid background noise. Individual absolute thresholds vary, depending on the strength of the signal and also on our experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness - Our difference threshold (also called just noticeable difference, or jnd) is the difference we can discern between two stimuli 50 percent of the time. Weber's law states that two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion (not a constant amount) to be perceived as different - Priming shows that we can process some information from stimuli below our absolute threshold for conscious awareness. But the effect is too fleeting to enable people to exploit us with subliming messages

4-21 How do our sense interact?

- Our sense can influence one another. This sensory interaction occurs, for example, when the smell of a favorite food amplifies its taste - Embodied cognition is the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgements

4-16 What three steps are basic to all our sensory systems?

- Our senses (1) receive sensory stimulation (often using specialized receptor cells); (2) transform that stimulation into neural impulses; and (3) deliver the neural information to the brain. Transduction is the process of converting one form of energy into another - Researchers in psychophysics study the relationships between stimuli's physical characteristics and our psychological experience of them

4-21 How can we best understand and control pain?

- Pain reflects bottom-up sensations (such as input from nociceptors, the sensory receptors that detect hurtful temperatures, pressure, or chemicals) - One theory of pain is that a "gate" in the spinal cord either opens to permit pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers to reach the brain, or class to prevent their passage - The biopsychosocial perspective views our perception of pain as the sum of biological, psychological, and social-cultural influences. Pain treatments often combine physical and psychological elements, including placebos and distractions

4-17 What are the claims of ESP, and what have most research psychologists concluded after putting these claims to the test?

- Parapsychology is the study of paranormal phenomena including extrasensory perception or ESP and psychokinesis - The three most testable forms of ESP are telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), clairvoyance (perceiving remote events), and precognition (perceiving future events) - Skeptics argue that 1) to believe in ESP you must believe the brain is capable of perceiving without sensory input, and 2) researchers have been unable to replicate ESP phenomena under controlled conditions

4-19 How do perceptual constancies help us organize our sensations into meaningful perceptions?

- Perceptual constancy enables us to perceive objects as stable despite the changing image they cast on our retinas. - Color constancy is our ability to perceive consistent color in objects, even though the lighting and wavelengths shift - Brightness (or lightness) constancy is our ability to perceive an object as having a constant lightness even when its illumination—the light cast upon it—changes - Our brain constructs our experience of an object's color or brightness through comparisons with other surrounding object - Shape constancy is our ability to perceive familiar objects (such as an opening door) as unchanging in shape - Size constancy is perceiving objects as unchanging in size despite their changing retinal images - Knowing an object's size gives us clues to its distance; knowing its distance gives clues about its size, but we sometimes misread monocular distance cues and reach the wrong conclusions, as in the Moon illusion

4-17 How do our experiences, contexts, emotions, and motivation influence our perceptions?

- Perceptual set is a mental predisposition that functions as a lens through which we perceive the world - Our learned concepts (schemas) prime us to organize and interpret ambiguous stimuli in certain ways - Our physical and emotional context, as well as our motivation, can create expectations and color our interpretation of events and behaviors

4-16 What are sensation and perception? What do we mean by bottom-up processing and top-down processing?

- Sensation is the process by which our sensory receptors and nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment. Perception is the process of organizing and interpreting this information, enabling recognition of meaningful events. Sensation and perception are actually parts of one continuous process - Bottom-up processing is sensory analysis that begins at the entry level, with information flowing from the sensory receptors to the brain. Top-down processing is information processing guided by high-level mental processes, as when we construct perceptions by filtering information through our experience and expectations

4-20 What are the characteristics of air pressure waves that we hear as sound, and how does the ear transform sound energy into neural messages?

- Sound waves are bands of compressed and expanded fire; our ears detect these changes in air pressure and transform them into neural impulses, which the brain decodes as sound - Sound waves vary in amplitude, which we perceive as differing loudness, and in frequency, which we experience as differing pitch - The outer ear consists of the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs - The inner ear consists oof the cochlea, semicircular canals, and vestibular sacs - Through a mechanical chain of events, sound waves traveling through the auditory canal cause tiny vibrations in the eardrum; the bones in the middle ear (hammer, anvil, and stirrup) amplify the vibrations and relay them to the fluid-filled cochlea; rippling of the basilar membrane, caused by pressure changes in the cochlear fluid, causes movement of the tiny hair cells, triggering neural messages to be sent (via the thalamus) to the auditory cortex in the brain - Sensorineural hearing loss (or nerve deafness) results from damage to the cochlea's hair cells or their associated nerves. Conduction hearing loss results from damage to the mechanical system that transmits sound waves to the cochlea. Cochlear implants can restore hearing for some people

4-21 How do we experience taste and smell?

- Taste and smell are chemical senses - Taste is a composite of five basic sensations—sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami—and of the aromas that interact t with information from the taste receptor cells of the taste buds - There are no basic sensations for smell. We have some 20 million olfactory receptor cells, with about 350 different receptor proteins - Odor molecules trigger combinations of receptors, in patterns that the olfactory cortex interprets. The receptor cells send messages to the brain's olfactory bulb, then to the temporal lobe, and to parts of the limbic system

4-21 Describe the receptor cells for taste and smell.

- Taste: Receptor cells in the tongue detect sweet, sour,m salty, bitter, and umami - Smell: Olfactory cells line the top of the nasal cavity

4-17 Martha is convinced she has extrasensory perception.Explain what Martha's specific abilities would be if shehad each of the following forms of ESP: • Telepathy • Clairvoyance • Precognition Then, briefly explain why you should doubt her claims.

- Telepathy: Martha would be able to use mind-to-mind communication; that is, she is able to read someone's mind - Clairvoyance: Martha would be able to perceive things happening at a distance; that is, a cousin who lives in another state just burnt her hand on the oven, and Martha feels it - Precognition: Martha would be able to see future events happen; that is, she knows a pop quiz will take place next wee - There has never been a conclusive scientific demonstration of extrasensory ability

4-21 Briefly explain the biopsychosocial perspective on pain and pain treatment.

- The biopsychosocial perspective on pain recognizes that pain is simultaneously a biological process and one that can be significantly modulated by the mind and by culture. The body signals pain to the brain through nociceptors in the skin, muscles, and organs; this pain reaches the brain after passing through a "gate" in the spinal cord. This "gate" can be opened and closed by psychological factors like distraction. Even the expectation of pain-relief after receiving a placebo can stimulate endorphin (natural pain-killer) release in pain patients. Culture also significantly affects the way that people feel and express pain. - Pain management experts have taken advantage of these principles, developing, for instance, techniques to distract patients undergoing painful operations.

4-18 As light reflected off an object reaches your eye, it passes through several structures before it reaches the retina. Describe three of these structures, including the function of each.

- The cornea is at the front of your eye; bends and focuses the light waves - The pupil is the opening through which light enters the eyeball; surrounded by iris which can expand and contract to allow more/less light to pass through the pupil - The lens is a transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina.

4-20 Describe two parts of the ear that transmit sound waves before they reach the hair cells.

- The eardrum, a tight membrane separating the middle ear from the outer ear - The three bones in the middle ear that transmit sound waves between the eardrum and the cochlea - The oval window, the point at which vibrations enter the cochlea - The cochlea, where the fluid inside vibrates and the hair cells are stimulated

4-18 What is the energy that we see as visible light, and how does the eye transform light energy into neural messages?

- The hue we perceive in light depends on its wavelength, and its brightness depends on its intensity - After entering the eye and being focused by the lens, light energy particles strike the eye's inner surface, the retina-the retina's light-sensitive rods and color-sensitive cones convert the light energy into neural impulses

4-20 What roles do the outer, middle, and inner ear play in helping a person hear a song on the radio?

- The outer ear collects the sound waves and sends them into the external meatus where the sound can be amplified - The middle ear extends from the tympanic membrane to the lateral area of the inner ear. It transmits the vibrations from the tympanic membrane to the inner ear - The inner ear changes the sound waves to the electrical signals and allows the brain to hear and understand

4-21 How do we sense our body's position and movement?

- Through kinesthesia, we sense the position and movement of our body parts - We monitor our body's position and movement, and maintain our balance with our vestibular sense

4-16 Marisol is planning a ski trip for spring break.

Absolute threshold is the minimum amount of stimulation a person can detect 50% of the time, through the senses. In this case, Marisol would need to experience an intensity of temperature allowing her to correctly detect the temperature 50% of the time. Difference threshold is the difference that must exist between two stimuli for the difference to be detected. In this case, Marisol would be able to notice the change in temperature depending on the amount it changes. Essentially Marisol will be able to sense the weather (get the information from the environment) and then be able to perceive it (make sense of the information). Therefore, she can detect the external stimulation, like the temperature, in order to understand the environment surrounding her

Unit 4 Signal detection theory is most closely associated with which perception process?

Absolute thresholds

4-21 Body position—kinesthesia

Any change in position of a body part, interacting with vision

4-21 Taste receptors

Basic tongue recruits for sweet, sour, salty, bitter, ad umami

4-21 Smell source

Chemical molecules breathes in through the nose

4-21 Tast source

Chemical molecules in the mouth

4-21 Hearing receptors

Cochlear hair cells in the inner ear

4-19 _____ govern our perceptions

Comparisons

4-20 What type of hearing loss is due to damage to the mechanism that transmits sound waves to the cochlea?

Conduction

4-18 What do we call the transparent, protective layer that light passes through as it enters the eye?

Cornea

4-18 Test Yourself What is the rapid sequence of events that occurs when you see and recognize a friend?

Light waves reflect off the person and travel into your eye, where the receptor cells in your retina convert the light waves' energy into neural impulses sent to your brain. Your brain processes the subdimensions of this visual input—including depth, movement, and form—separately but simultaneously. It interprets this information based on previously stored information and your expectations into a conscious perception of your friend

4-21 Vision source

Light waves striking the eye

4-18 Which of the following explains reversed- color afterimages?

Opponent process theory

4-21 How do we sense touch?

Our sense of touch is actually several sense—pressure, warmth, cold, and pain—that combine to produce other sensations, such as "hot"

4-16 What is the function of sensory adaptation?

Sensory adaptation (our diminished sensitivity to constant or routine odors, sounds, and touches) focuses our attention on informative changes in our environment

4-21 Touch receptors

Skin receptors detect pressure, warmth, cold, and pain

4-21 Hearing source

Sound waves striking the outer ear

Unit 4 When we go to the movies, we see smooth continuous motion rather than a series of still images due to what process?

Stroboscopic movement

Unit 4 What is the purpose of the iris?

To allow light into the eye

Unit 4 The process by which rods and cones change electromagnetic energy into neural messages is called what?

Transduction

4-17 Test Yourself What type of evidence shows that, indeed, "there is more to perception than meets the senses"?

We construct our perceptions based on both sensory input and—experiments show—on our assumptions, expectations, schemas, and perceptual sets, often influenced by the surrounding context.

4-20 Place theory

one of three theories that help us understand pitch perception; in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with the place where the cochlea's membrane is stimulated; we hear different pitches because different sound waves trigger activity at different places along the cochlea's basilar membrane; the brain determines a sound's pitch by recognizing the specific place (on membrane) that is generating neural signal; high frequencies produced large vibrations near beginning of cochlea's membrane; low frequencies vibrate more of membrane, including near the end; can explain how we hear high pitched sounds, but not low pitched sounds because the neural signals generated by low-pitched sounds are not so neatly localized on basilar membrane

4-20 Frequency theory

one of three theories that help us understand pitch perception; in hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matches the frequency of a tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch; brain reads pitch by monitoring frequency of neural impulses traveling cup the auditory nerve; whole basilar membrane vibrates with incoming sound wave, triggering neural impulses to brain at same rate as sound wave; if sound wave has frequency of 100 waves per second, then 100 pulses per second travel up auditory nerve; individual neuron cannot fire faster than 1000 times per second, so how can we sense sounds with frequencies above 1000 waves per second?

4-20 Volley principle

one of three theories that help us understand pitch perception; neural cells can alternate firing; by firing in rapid succession, they can achieve combined frequency above 1000 waves per second; place theory best explains how we sense HIGH PITCH, frequency theory best explain how we sense LOW PITCH, and combination of place and frequency theory handles pitches in INTERMEDIATE RANGE

4-16 Detecting a weak stimulus, or signal, depends not only on the signal's strength (such as a hearing-test tone) but also on...

our psychological state—our experience, expectations, motivation, and alertness

4-21 Endorphins

pain is not merely a physical phenomenon of injured nerves sending impulses to a definable brain area; when we are distracted from pain and soothed by release of our natural painkilling endorphins, our experience of pain diminishes; sports injuries may go unnoticed until after-game shower; people who carry a gene that boosts the availability of endorphins are less bothered by pain, and their brain is less responsive to pain; others carry mutated gene that disrupts pain circuit neurotransmission and experience little pain

4-21 Tinnitus

people with hearing loss often experience the sound of silence (phantom sounds) like a ringing in the ears sensation known as tinnitus

4-19 Color constancy

perceiving familiar objects as having consistent color, even if changing illumination alters the wavelengths reflected by the object; color does not reside in an object; our experience of color depends on the object's context; if you viewed an isolated tomato through a paper tube, its color would seem to change as light (and thus wavelengths reflected from its surface) changed; if you viewed tomato as one item in a bowl of fresh fruit and vegetables, its color would remain roughly constant as the lighting shifts

4-17 Precognition

perceiving future events, such as an unexpected death in the next month; one of the most testable and most relevant parapsychological concepts

4-19 Perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging (having consistent lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images change; recognize objects without being deceived by changes in their color, brightness, shape, or size; a top-down process

4-17 Clairvoyance

perceiving remote events, such as a house on fire in another state; one of the most testable and most relevant parapsychological concepts

4-21 Vestibular sense

the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance; monitors your head's and body's position and movement; biological gyroscopes for this sense are in your inner ear; *semicircular canals* (3D pretzel) and *vestibular sacs* (connect canals with cochlea) contain fluid that moves when your head rotates or tilts; this movement stimulates hairlike receptors which send messages to cerebellum at back of brain, thus enabling you to sense your body position and maintain your balance ex) if you twirl around and then come to an abrupt halt, neither the fluid in your semicircular canals nor your kinesthetic receptors will immediately return to their neutral state; dizzy aftereffect fools your brain with the sensation that you're still spinning; illustrates principle that underlies perceptual illusions... mechanisms that normally give us an accurate experience of the world can, under special conditions, fool us

4-20 Audition

the sense or act of hearing; is highly adaptive; sounds we hear best are those sounds with frequencies in a range corresponding to that of the human voice; those with normal hearing are acutely sensitive to faint sounds; easily detect differences among thousands of possible human voices

4-18 Pupil

the small adjustable opening in the center of the eye through which light enters; where light passes after the cornea; surrounded by the iris; in front of the lens

4-17 Parapsychology

the study of paranormal phenomena, including ESP and psychokinesis; perform scientific experiments searching for possible ESP and other paranormal phenomena; needs to be reproducible

4-16 Psychophysics

the study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli, such as their intensity, and our psychological experience of them

4-21 Kinesthesia

the system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts; sensors in joints, tendons, and muscles enable kinesthesia; feel disembodied like their body is dead, not real, and not theirs; vision interacts with kinesthesia (balancing with eyes closed)

4-18 Opponent-process theory

the theory that opposing retinal processes (red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enable color vision; for example, some cells are stimulated by green and inhibited by red; others are stimulated by red and inhibited by green; came from afterimages; in retina and in thalamus, some neurons are turned on by red but turned off by green; others turned on by green and turned off by red; both cannot travel at once, so we do not see reddish green; but red and blue travel in separate channels so we can see reddish blue magenta

4-18 Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory

the theory that the retina contains three different color receptors—one most sensitive to red, one to green, one to blue—which, when stimulated in combination, can produce the perception of any color; people with color-deficient vision aren't colorblind, but simply lack functioning red or green sensitive cones, or sometimes both

4-21 Gate-control theory

the theory that the spinal cord contains a neurological "gate" that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on to the brain; the "gate" is opened by the activity of pain signals traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers or by information coming from the brain; spinal cord contains small nerve fibers that conduct most pain signals, and large fibers that conduct most other sensory signals; spina cord contains a neurological gate; when tissue is injured, the small fibers activate and open the gate and you feel pain; large fiber activity closes the gate, blocking pain signals and preventing them from reaching the brain one way to treat chronic pain is to stimulate gate closing activity in the large neural fibers

4-18 Lens

the transparent structure behind the pupil that changes shape to help focus images on the retina; focuses incoming light rays into an image on the retina; lens focuses the rays by changing its curvature (accommodation)

4-18 Our eyes receive light energy and ________ it into ________ that our brain then processes into what we consciously see

transduce (transform); neural messages

4-17 True or false: A ball appears bigger when you are hitting well