Chapter 1

Question 1

Sensation

Answer 1

The registration of physical stimuli on sensory receptors

Question 2

Stimulus

Answer 2

An element of the world around us that impinges on our sensory systems

Question 3

Perception

Answer 3

The process of creating conscious perceptual experience from sensory input

Question 4

Transduction

Answer 4

The process of converting a physical stimulus into an electrochemical signal

Question 5

Receptors

Answer 5

Specialized sensory neurons that convert physical stimuli into neural responses

Question 6

Neural response

Answer 6

The signal produced by receptor cells that can then be sent to the brain

Question 7

Phenomenology

Answer 7

Our subjective experience of perception

Question 8

Action

Answer 8

Any motor activity

Question 9

Aftereffect

Answer 9

A sensory experience that occurs after prolonged experience of visual motion in one particular direction

Question 10

Doctrine of specific nerve energies

Answer 10

The argument that it is the specific neurons activated that determine the particular type of experience

Question 11

Constructive approach

Answer 11

The idea that perceptions are constructed using information from our senses and cognitive processes

Question 12

Unconscious inference

Answer 12

Perception is not adequately determined by sensory information, so an inference or educated guess is part of the process; this inference is not the result of active problem solving but rather a non-conscious cognitive process

Question 13

Weber’s law

Answer 13

A just noticeable difference between two stimuli is related to the magnitude or strength of the stimuli

Question 14

Psychophysics

Answer 14

The study of the relationship between physical stimuli and perception events

Question 15

Gestalt psychology

Answer 15

A school of thought claiming that we view the world in terms of general patterns and well organized structures rather than separable individual elements

Question 16

Direct perception (Gibsonian approach)

Answer 16

The approach to perception that claims that information in the sensory world is complex and abundant, and therefore the perceptual systems need only directly perceive such complexity

Question 17

Ecological approach to perception

Answer 17

Another name to the direct perception view

Question 18

Information processing approach

Answer 18

The view that perceptual and cognitive systems can be viewed as the flow of information from one process to another

Question 19

Computational approach

Answer 19

An approach to the study of perception in which the necessary computations the brain would need to carry out to perceive the world are specified

Question 20

Neuroscience

Answer 20

The study of the structures and processes in the nervous system and brain

Question 21

Micro-electrodes

Answer 21

A device so small that it can penetrate a single neuron in the mammalian central nervous system without destroying the cell

Question 22

Neuropsychology

Answer 22

The study of the relation of brain damage to changes in behavior

Question 23

Agnosia

Answer 23

A deficit in some aspects of perception as a result of brain damage

Question 24

Prosopagnosia

Answer 24

Face agnosia, resulting in a deficit in perceiving faces

Question 25

Neuroimaging

Answer 25

Technologies that allow us to map living intact brains as they engage in ongoing tasks

Question 26

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)

Answer 26

A neuroimaging technique that generates an image of the brain on the basis of the blood levels in different areas of the brain, which correlate with activity levels in those regions

Question 27

Time to collision

Answer 27

The estimate that an approaching object will contact another

Question 28

Size arrival effect

Answer 28

Bigger approaching objects are seen as being more likely to collide with the viewer than smaller approaching objects