Psych chapter 6 - Exam 2

Our ability to focus on informative changes in the environment is MOST directly supported by:

Adaptation

You are a building contractor surveying the progress on a home that is being built. From one angle, it appears that the home is completely framed. However, when you move to the right, you see the gaps. This illustrates the principle of:

Closure

External ear: Pinna

Collects sound eaves and funnels them towards the eardrum

Lens

Focuses light rays falling on the retina. Curvature of lens adjusts to alter visual focus.

Sensory receptor for taste

Tastes buds on tongue

Opponent process theory of color vision

The 4 basic colors are paired and the members of the pair oppose each other. If one member is stimulated the other is inhibited. red - green black - white blue- yellow

Katrina is driving her 15-year-old car. She notices a sound coming from the engine, which involves _____. Katrina immediately starts thinking that the sound is similar to the sound the car made the last time she had it repaired, which involves _____.

bottom-up; top-down

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.

Cornea

a clear membrane covering the visible part of the eye that helps gather and direct incoming light

Detection is to interpretation as _____ is to _____.

sensation; perception

Touch

sensed through pressure, temperature, and pain through the skin.

While playing golf, James forgets that his sunglasses are on top of his head. As the day goes on, he forgets that he placed them there. This demonstrates the process of:

sensory adaptation

Inner ear: Hair cells

the auditory receptors, stimulated by waves in fluid of the inner ear

Fovea

the central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster

Tanisha 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 Tanisha to detect. She turned it back down to 14 after Tanisha asked her to lower it, which satisfied Tanisha. This is probably the result of:

the difference threshold

embodied cognition

the influence of bodily sensations, gestures, and other states on cognitive preferences and judgements

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:

the lens of her eyes is less able to accommodate

optic nerve

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

Pupil

the opening in the center of the iris that helps regulate the amount of light passing into the rear chamber of the eye. Dilates & Constricts

figure-ground

the organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground).

grouping

the perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups

vestibular sense

the sense of body movement and position, including the sense of balance

Gestalt Psychology

the study of how we integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.

Kinesthesia

the system for sensing the position and movement of individual body parts

proximity

things near one another are perceived as belonging together

Samantha opens her eyes in the morning to see flowers 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

Middle ear: Eardrum

vibrates in response to soundwaves

continuity

we see elements in ways to produce smooth continuation

Trichromatic theory of color vision

color vision is due to 3 colors sensitive to different wavelengths. long - red medium - green short - blue

Rods

Specialized visual receptors that play a key role in night vision and peripheral vision.

Properties of light waves

Stimulus input: light wavelength: hue/color amplitude: intensity/brightness

Sound waves

Stimulus input: sound waves wavelength: frequency/pitch amplitude: intensity/loudness

Retina

Light sensitive inner surface of the eye that contains receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin processing visual information

Smell

Olfactory; olfactory cilia in nasal cavity

"Believing is seeing." This reversal of a familiar saying BEST reflects the influence of _____ on sensation and perception.

Perceptual set

Perception

Process of organizing and interpreting sensory information

Inner ear: Cochlea

a fluid-filled, coiled tunnel that contains hearing receptors

what is a perpetual set and what is it affected by

a perpetual set is a mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not another. affected by context, motivation, and emotion.

signal detection theory

a theory predicting how and when we detect the presence of a faint stimulus (signal) amid background stimulation (noise).

Stefan has volunteered to participate in an experiment studying vision. He has agreed to wear a pair of glasses that invert his vision. Due to perceptual _____, after about a week he is able to perform his usual tasks, like riding a bike or reading a book.

adaptation

McGurk Effect

an error in perception that occurs when we misperceive sounds because the audio and visual parts of the speech are mismatched.

Phi phenomenon

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

bottom-up processing

analysis that begins with the sensory receptors and works up to the brain's integration of sensory information

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

constancy

Transduction

conversion of one form of energy into another

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

cornea, pupil, lens

monocular cues

depth cues available to either eye alone relative height relative size overlap/interposition linear perspective light and shadow

binocular cues

depth cues that depend on the use of two eyes

sensory adaptation

diminished sensitivity as a consequence of constant stimulation

closure

group elements to create a sense of closure of complete figures

Denise wears an extremely bright safety yellow sweatshirt when she cycles to the gym after dark. The sweatshirt's brightness reflects the _____ of the light it reflects.

high amplitude

Middle ear: Ossicles

includes a hammer, anvil, and stirrup. forms a three-stage lever system that amplifies tiny changes in our pressure and concentrates that change on the cochlea.

top-down processing

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

Malik knows that a passing bus is nearer than a parked car because the bus momentarily blocks his view of the car. This example illustrates the depth cue of:

interposition

perceptual constancy

perceiving objects as unchanging even as illumination and retinal images change

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

perceptual set; context

Sensation

process where our sensory receptors & nervous system receive and represent stimulus energies from our environment

An inability to recognize faces is called

prosopagnosia

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

retinal

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.

Inner ear: Basilar membrane

runs the length of the cochlea and hold the auditory receptors

Sensory receptors

sensory nerve endings that respond to stimulus

5 basic tastes

sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami