Chapter 6

The ability of nerve cells in the brain to discriminate specific angles, lines, and movements of an object is known as:

feature detection.

Two TSA officers are scanning bags at the airport. One of the officers lets a bag go through, but the other officer yells, "Wait, didn't you see that?" Why one officer saw a weapon and the other did not is best explained by:

signal detection theory.

Astra is house-sitting. On the first night, a thunderstorm causes the electricity to go out. She remembers seeing some candles and matches next to the grandfather clock. Why does she automatically cock her head when trying to pinpoint the sound of the clock?

so that her two ears will receive slightly different messages

If a visual image is first presented _____, the chance of a person later recognizing the same briefly presented image is improved.

subliminally

Relative luminance refers to the amount of light an object reflects relative to its _____.

surroundings

Jasmine was in a serious car accident and is having trouble recognizing familiar faces. She most likely suffered damage to her _____ lobe, just behind her right ear.

temporal

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

the phi phenomenon

Dennis, a nurse, notes that some parents of asthmatic children respond to very small changes in their children's breathing, and seek care accordingly. However, other parents do not notice the same small changes. This type of difference in reaction to stimuli is best explained by:

the signal detection theory.

The fact that perception involves more than the sum of our sensations best illustrates the importance of _____ processing.

top-down

You open your eyes in the morning to see flowers by your bedside. At that point, your 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.

Hearing is the result of the transformation of vibrating air into _____ impulses that are interpreted by the brain

nerve

The fact that _____ involve more than the sum of our sensations best illustrates the importance of top-down processing.

perceptions

According to the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic theory, the retina has three types of color receptors. Each of these types is sensitive to one of three colors: _____, green, or blue.

red

We perceive a tomato to be red because it _____ the long wavelengths of red.

rejects

Drivers sometimes overestimate the distance between their own vehicles and pedestrians who are short, because they rely on the distance cue known as:

relative size.

_____ refers to the distance from the peak of one light or sound wave to the peak of the next.

wavelength

Psychologist George Stratton conducted a famous experiment on perceptual adaptation in which he:

wore a pair of glasses that inverted his vision for 8 days.

Absolute threshold is the minimum stimulation needed to detect a particular sensory stimulus (e.g., light, sound, pressure, taste) _____ percent of the time

50

Rules for organizing stimuli into coherent groups were first identified by:

Gestalt psychologists.

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

Perception

The size of the difference threshold is greater for heavier objects than for lighter ones. This best illustrates:

Weber's law.

The minute you walk into your mother-in-law's house to visit, you are struck by the strong smell of her perfume. However, after about 10 minutes, you no longer notice the smell. This is probably the result of sensory _____.

adaptation

Alicia is traveling on a train. She stares out the window at a house. The sidewalk in front of the house will appear to move _____.

backward

The eye takes in an inverted image of the world, yet we see the world correctly because the _____ reassembles the image.

brain

Even when seen through sunglasses, grass appears equally as green as it does without glasses. This best illustrates:

color constancy.

At the optometrist's office, Lou failed to distinguish numbers from the color designs shown to him. Lou is most likely:

colorblind.

Sensory adaptation helps people:

concentrate on more important things.

Ricardo has been suffering from a lengthy battle with the flu. His ears are painfully plugged with fluid. One morning his right ear "pops" from all of the pressure and fluid comes out. He screams in pain because the eardrum has punctured. This will result in:

conduction hearing loss.

Researchers used goggles to restrict kittens' vision for several months. Once the goggles were removed, the kittens:

could distinguish only color and brightness.

The distance between our right and left eyes functions to provide us with a cue for _____ perception known as retinal disparity.

depth

Susan asked her roommate to lower the radio as she was trying to study. Her roommate had turned the radio up originally from a volume level of 14 to 15, which was just enough for Susan to detect. She turned it back down to 14 after Susan asked her to lower it, which satisfied Susan. This is probably the result of the _____ threshold.

difference

Immanuel Kant and John Locke would have been most likely to disagree about the extent to which perception is influenced by:

experience.

A researcher subliminally flashes words that have either emotionally positive content (e.g., puppies, people embracing) or negative content (e.g., murder, accidents) immediately before showing them a picture of a house. Then, asked to rate the house in terms of attractiveness, the participants:

give the houses that follow positive content images higher ratings.

Monte was born with cataracts. He had surgery when he was 30 years old, which restored his sight. After his surgery:

he could NOT recognize objects by sight that were familiar to him by touch.

Pedro recognized that his son was closer to him than his daughter because his son partially obstructed his view of his daughter. Pedro's perception was most clearly influenced by a depth cue known as:

interposition.

In terms of our sensory experience of light, wavelength is to _____ as wave intensity is to brightness.

hue

The FBI is considering a new identification method. Instead of using old-fashioned fingerprints, they have decided to scan the _____.

iris

Railroad tracks appear to converge in the distance. This provides a cue for depth perception known as:

linear perspective.

If we stare at an object, it does not disappear because our eyes are _____.

moving

Bart was struck by a 2 x 4 to the back of his head. He is having severe difficulties with his vision because the injury he sustained was to which lobe?

occipital

Afterimages are best explained by:

opponent-processing theory.

Some stroke victims lose the capacity to perceive motion, but retain the capacity to perceive shapes and colors. Others lose the capacity to perceive colors, but retain the capacity to perceive movement and form. These peculiar visual disabilities best illustrate our normal capacity for:

parallel processing.

Gestalt psychologists were fond of saying that in _____, the whole may exceed the sum of its parts.

perception

Even though it is completely dark outside and you are inside your house, you know that the color of your car as well as the size of it hasn't changed. This is an example of:

perceptual constancy.

After hearing that Bryce had served a prison sentence, Janet began to perceive his genuinely friendly behavior as insincere and manipulative. This best illustrates the impact of:

perceptual set

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

Studying the relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli (e.g., intensity) and the _____ experience of them involves the field known as psychophysics.

psychological

Put the following events in the order in which they occur.

retinal processing, feature detection, parallel processing, recognition

Billy Bob works at the airport as a member of the ground crew. He typically takes off his hearing protection as he finds it cumbersome. Prolonged exposure to the roars of the jet engines will result in:

sensorineural hearing loss.

Barbara stubbed her toe last night. It hurts so that all day today she has been aware of her toe. She says, "This is so weird. I usually don't think about my toe." Barbara is describing:

sensory adaptation.

If you move your watchband up your wrist an inch or so, you will feel it for only a few moments. This best illustrates:

sensory adaption

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

shape constancy.

Talia is 45 years old. She has started to notice that newspaper print is too small for her to read. Talia needs reading glasses because the lenses of her eyes are less able to _____.

accommodate

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