Psychology 6 B

accommodation

(1) in developmental psychology, adapting our current understandings (schemas) to incorporate new information. (2) in sensation and perception, the process by which the eye's lens changes shape to focus near or far objects on the retina. (pp. 130, 211)

temporal lobe

... area by your right ear (FIGURE 6.20) enables you to perceive faces and, thanks to a specialized neural network, to recognize them from varied viewpoints

touch

Adults who were blind from birth but who gained sight after surgery were not able to recognize objects by sight that were familiar by _____.

movement 1

After a stroke damaged areas near the rear of both sides of her brain, she found herself unable to perceive ... People in a room seemed "suddenly here or there but I [did not see] them moving."

His vision will be unaffected by this sensory restriction.

At age 53, Ralph underwent radical eye surgery and had to wear an eye patch for four months. How will this sensory restriction affect his vision?

Step 3

Bipolar activates ganglion cells, whose combined axons form optic nerve. Nerve transmits info in thalamus of the brain.

pupils

Cats are able to open their ... much wider than we can, which allows more light into their eyes so they can see better at night.

Step 2

Chemical reaction activates bipolar cells.

lenses

Forty-five-year-old Mortimer has noticed that newspaper print is too small for him to read. Mortimer needs reading glasses because the _____ of his eyes are less able to accommodate.

Light entering the eye triggers chemical changes in the light-sensitive rods and color-sensitive cones at the back of the retina, which convert light energy into neural impulses. After processing by bipolar and ganglion cells, neural impulses travel from the retina through the optic nerve to the thalamus, and on to the visual cortex.

How do the rods and cones process information, and what is the path information travels from the eye to the brain?

According to the Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory, 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 (red, green, or blue). Hering's opponent-process theory proposed three additional color processes (red-versus-green, blue-versus-yellow, black- versus-white). 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 two theories, and the research supporting them, show that color processing occurs in two stages.

How do we perceive color in the world around us?

figure...ground

In terms of perception, a band's lead singer would be considered..., and the other musicians would be considered...

Kiera's retinal cells are extremely responsive, and the pressure from her finger triggers them.

Kiera stayed up way too late last night and her eyes are tired. She closes her eyes, and as she rubs the left side of her left eyelid, she notices a patch of light to the right. This is because:

Step 1 Light entering

Light entering eye triggers chemical reaction in rods & cones at the back of retina.

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

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

rods than cones

Some nocturnal animals, such as toads, mice, rats, and bats, have impressive night vision thanks to having many more ... in their retinas. These creatures probably have very poor color vision.

movement

Tati suffered severe stroke damage near the rear of both sides of her brain. She is now unable to perceive _____.

iris

The muscle that controls the pupil's size is called the _____.

rods and cones

Visual information is processed by ganglion cells after it is processed by _____ and after it is processed by bipolar cells.

What we see as light is only a thin slice of the broad spectrum of electromagnetic energy. The portion visible to humans extends from the blue-violet to the red light wavelengths. After entering the eye and being focused by a lens, light energy particles strike the eye's inner surface, the retina. The hue we perceive in a light depends on its wavelength, and its brightness depends on its intensity.

What are the characteristics of the energy that we see as visible light? What structures in the eye help focus that energy?

interposition

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

perceptual adaptation

ability to adjust to changed sensory input, including an artificially displaced or even inverted visual field. (p. 223)

depth perception

ability to see objects in three dimensions although the images that strike the retina are two-dimensional; allows us to judge distance. (p. 218)

intensity

amount of energy in a light wave or sound wave, which influences what we perceive as brightness or loudness. Intensity is determined by the wave's amplitude (height). (p. 209)

retinal disparity

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. (p. 219)

fovea

central focal point in the retina, around which the eye's cones cluster. (p. 212)

monocular cues

depth cues, such as interposition and linear perspective, available to either eye alone. (p. 219)

binocular cues

depth cues, such as retinal disparity, that depend on the use of two eyes. (p. 219)

hue

dimension of color that is determined by the wavelength of light; what we know as the color names blue, green, and so forth. (p. 209)

wavelength

distance from the peak of one light wave 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. (p. 209)

visual cliff

laboratory device for testing depth perception in infants and young animals. (p. 218)

retina

light-sensitive inner surface of the eye, containing the receptor rods and cones plus layers of neurons that begin the processing of visual information. (p. 211)

feature detectors

nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of the stimulus, such as shape, angle, or movement. (p. 215)

optic nerve

nerve that carries neural impulses from the eye to the brain. (p. 211)

figure-ground

organization of the visual field into objects (the figures) that stand out from their surroundings (the ground). (p. 217)

gestalt

organized whole. Gestalt psychologists emphasized our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes. (p. 217)

grouping

perceptual tendency to organize stimuli into coherent groups. (p. 217)

parallel processing

processing of many aspects of a problem simultaneously; the brain's natural mode of information processing for many functions. (pp. 86, 216, 284)

cones

retinal receptors that are concentrated near the center of the retina and that function in daylight or in well-lit conditions. Cones detect fine detail and give rise to color sensations. (p. 211)

rods

retinal receptors that detect black, white, and gray, and are sensitive to movement; necessary for peripheral and twilight vision, when cones don't respond. (p. 211)

opponent-process theory

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. (p. 214)

Young-Helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory

theory that the retina contains three different types of 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. (p. 213)