Chapter 6

Question 1

bottom-up processing

Answer 1

sensory analysis that starts at the entry level

Question 2

top-down processing

Answer 2

we construct perceptions drawing on both sensations coming bottom up to the brain and experiences/expectations (top down)

Question 3

psychophysics

Answer 3

relationships between physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience with them

Question 4

absolute thresholds

Answer 4

awareness of a faint stimuli (minimum stimulation necessary to detect a particular light, sound, pressure, taste, odor
50% of the time

Question 5

subliminal stimulation

Answer 5

below the threshold stimuli (we detect stimuli only some of the time)
increases with size of stimuli

Question 6

weber’s law

Answer 6

for their difference to be perceptible, two stimuli must differ by a constant proportion (not a constant amount)

Question 7

sensory adaptation

Answer 7

our diminishing sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus

Question 8

(vision)

hue

Answer 8

dimension of color that is determined by wavelength of light

Question 9

(vision)

intensity

Answer 9

amount of energy in a light wave (determined by amplitude)

Question 10

(vision)

eye

Answer 10

• light enters through cornea with bends light to provide focus
• pupil is small adjustable opening surrounded by iris (colored muscle that adjusts light intake)
• then to retina (multilayered tissue on eyeball’s inner surface
• lens focuses rays’ curvature (accommodation)

Question 11

(vision)

retina

Answer 11

rods (black, white, gray, dim light)

cones (near center of retina; fine detail and color)

Question 12

(vision)

optic nerve

Answer 12

carries neural impulse from eye to brain

Question 13

(vision)

blind spot

Answer 13

where optic nerve is leaving eye (no receptors here)

Question 14

(vision)

fovea

Answer 14

central point in retina (lots of cones)

Question 15

(vision)

feature detectors

Answer 15

nerve cells in the brain that respond to specific features of a stimulus (shape, angle, movement)

Question 16

(vision)

parallel processing

Answer 16

doing many things at once

color, movement, form, depth

Question 17

(vision)

young-helmholtz trichromatic (three-color) theory

Answer 17

theory that retina contains three different color receptors (red, blue, green)

Question 18

(vision)

opponent-process theory

Answer 18

theory that opposing retinal processes enable color vision

Question 19

hearing

Answer 19

sound waves (air pressure waves)

Question 20

(hearing)

frequency

Answer 20

number of complete wavelengths that pass a point per time unit

Question 21

(hearing)

pitch

Answer 21

a tone’s experienced highness or lowness (depends on frequency)

Question 22

(hearing)

middle ear

Answer 22

transmits eardrum’s vibrations through a piston made of three small bones (hammer, anvil, stirrup)

Question 23

(hearing)

cochlea

Answer 23

• snail-shaped tube; inner ear
• sound waves cause membrane to vibrate, jostling fluid, causing ripples in basilar membrane bending hair cells triggering impulses in adjacent nerve cells whose axons converge to form and auditory nerve

Question 24

touch

Answer 24

• only pressure has identifiable receptors

- other skin sensations are variations of pressure, warmth, cold, pain

Question 25

(touch)

kinesthesis

Answer 25

sense of the position and movement of your body parts

Question 26

(touch)

vestibular sense

Answer 26

monitors head’s (and body’s) position and movement

inner ear

Question 27

(touch)

pain

Answer 27

combine bottom-up sensations and top-down processes

Question 28

(touch)

pain-biological influences

Answer 28

• nociceptors (sensory receptors that detect hurtful temperatures, pressure, or chemicals)
• gate-control theory (spinal cord contains neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass to brain)

Question 29

(touch)

pain-psychological influences

Answer 29

edit memories of pain (remember peak and ending)

Question 30

(touch)

pain-social-cultural influences

Answer 30

perceive more pain when others experiencing pain

Question 31

Taste

Answer 31

sweet (energy source)
salty (Na needed by body)
sour (potentially toxic acid)
bitter (potentially poisonous)
umami (proteins to grow and repair tissue)

Question 32

(taste)

sensory interaction

Answer 32

the principle that one sense may influence another

Question 33

perceptual organization

Answer 33

form perception, depth perception

Question 34

form perception

Answer 34

• figure and ground (relationship continually reverses; always organize stimulus into a figure seen against ground)
• grouping (proximity, similarity, continuity, connectedness, closure)

Question 35

depth perception

Answer 35

seeing objects in 3D, enabling us to estimate their distance

visual cliff, binocular cues, monocular cues

Question 36

(depth perception)

binocular cues

Answer 36

judging distance of nearby objects
-retinal disparity (when comparing differences between two objects provides one important binocular cue to the relative distance of different objects)

Question 37

(depth perception)

monocular cues

Answer 37

things at a distance, interposition and linear perspective; available to either eye alone
(relative height, relative size, interposition, linear perspective, light and shadow, relative motion)

Question 38

perceptual constancy

Answer 38

ability to recognize that objects without being deceived by change in shape, size, brightness, color

Question 39

(perceptual interpretation)

perceptual adaptation

Answer 39

makes the world seem normal again

Question 40

(perceptual interpretation)

perceptual set

Answer 40

given by our experiences, assumptions, expectations
greatly influences (top-down) what we perceive

Question 41

cultural context

Answer 41

tree perceived by us vs someone from Africa maybe

Question 42

extrasensory perception (ESP)

Answer 42

perception without sensory input

Question 43

(ESP)

telepathy

Answer 43

mind-to-mind communication

Question 44

(ESP)

clairvoyance

Answer 44

perception of remote events

Question 45

(ESP)

prerecognition

Answer 45

perceiving future events