Chapter 3 Psych example #48151

Ans: convert an external stimulus into an electrical-chemical message the nervous system can use. Expln:Sensory receptors are the body's "antennae" to the outside world. Each sensory receptor type is specially designed to receive a specific external signal and convert it to an electrical-chemical signal that the brain can understand.

Ans: absolute threshold Expln: Gustav Fechner investigated the sensitivity of the human sensory systems and called the lowest level of a stimulus that a person could detect half of the time the absolute threshold.

Ans: 15 Expln: According to Weber's law, the just noticeable difference (jnd) is a constant proportion. A change from 200 to 220 represents an increase of 20 units and a jnd of 20/200 or 0.10, which is 10 percent. If the company starts with 150 horsepower, they will need to increase it by 10 percent in order for the driver to notice a difference. Ten percent of 150 is 15.

Ans: saccades Expln: Saccades are the small quick movements your eye makes in order to keep the visual stimuli changing. When our sensory receptors receive unchanging, constant stimuli, they eventually stop responding to the stimulus. This process is known as sensory adaptation.

Ans: photons and waves Expln: Light can be thought of as a wave and as particles. Photons are the specific type of particles of which light is composed.

Ans:cornea Expln:The cornea is the outermost coating of the eye. It is transparent and serves to protect the eye and to help focus the light coming in to the eye.

Ans: They are found mainly in the center of the eye Expln:Cones are the sensory receptors that respond to color and send visual information of high acuity or visual sharpness. The cones are located primarily in the center of the retina. Rods are more sensitive than cones to light, and they respond only to black and white.

Ans: opponent-process Expln:The opponent process theory of color vision was introduced, in part, to explain the phenomenon of the afterimage.

Ans: pitch Expln: Both light and sound travel in waves. Pitch is determined by the length of the sound wave just as color is determined by the length of the light wave. Both brightness and loudness are determined by the height of their respective waves.

Ans: sound waves Expln: The outer and middle parts of the ear are designed to funnel the vibrating air molecules to the inner ear where they are translated into an electrical signal and sent to the brain.

Ans: tympanic membrane Expln: The tympanic membrane is also known as the eardrum. Sound waves cause the tympanic membrane to vibrate, which then causes the bones of the middle ear to move back and forth.

Ans: hammer, anvil, stirrup Expln: The order of the bones is hammer, anvil, stirrup which spells "has."

Ans: volley theory Expln: Volley theory describes the perception of pitch for the middle frequencies (100 - 1000 Hz). Frequency theory describes the low frequencies (100 Hz and less), and place theory describes the fastest frequencies (1000 Hz and higher).

Ans: 1,000Hz Expln: The idea is that at very high sound frequencies, the action potential frequency can't keep up, so pitch has to be coded by the place on the basilar membrane that is activated.

Ans: hair cells of the cochlea Expln: Sound waves result in the vibration of the basilar membrane, which causes the hair cells of the cochlea to brush against the membrane above them. In this way, sound waves are transformed into an electrical signal (action potential) that the brain can understand. Although hair cells exist in the vestibular system and hair-like cilia exist in the olfactory system, neither are involved in auditory transduction. The papillae are visible components of the gustatory system and contain the taste buds rather than hair cells.

Ans: they amplify the vibrations of the ear drum Expln: The vibration of the three bones of the middle ear, the hammer, anvil and stirrup, amplify the vibrations from the ear drum. The hair cells of the cochlear transform sound waves into an electrical signal. The pinna funnels sound waves from the outside world into the inner ear. The semicircular canals provide information about movement in the x, y and z planes.

Ans: conductive Expln: Conduction hearing impairment is caused by damage to the outer or middle ear.

Ans: outer and middle ear Expln: Cochlear implants use an electronic device instead of the movements of the bones in the middle ear to convert the sound wave into a signal that is then sent to the auditory nerve in the inner ear.

Ans: papillae Expln: The bumps you can see with your eye are the papillae. The taste buds are located along the sides of the papillae. Each taste bud contains 10-20 taste receptors.

Ans: olfactory bulb Expln: The olfactory system is the only system in which the receptors send their signal directly to the higher brain and bypass the thalamus, which normally acts as a filter for the processes of the lower brain.

Ans: the gate control theory Expln: According to your textbook, the gate-control theory of pain is the best current explanation for how pain works. The sensory conflict theory applies to motion sickness; the volley principle explains the perception of sound rather than pain. Although congenital analgesia is related to pain, it refers to a condition in which people cannot feel pain.

Ans: having to do with movement and body position Expln: The vestibular sense provides you with a sense of balance and sends your brain information about acceleration and tilt.

Ans: middle ear Expln: Although the otolith organs are located in the inner ear, the inner ear is a more precise answer.

Ans: perception of the spatial location of body parts in relation to one another Expln: Proprioceptors aid in the perception of the spatial location of body parts in relation to one another. The term referring to the perception of smell is olfaction.

Ans: size constancy Expln: Size constancy refers to the fact that our perception of the size of an object tends to remain constant.

Ans: to complete figures that are incomplete Expln: Closure is one of the Gestalt principles of perception and refers to our tendency to "close" objects to form a complete picture.

Ans: similarity Expln: The saying is emphasizing that objects with similar characteristics ("birds of a feather") tend to be grouped together ("flock together"). This is the principle of similarity.

Ans: binocular ues Expln: The phrase "ocular" means having to do with the eyes. "Mono" refers to one and "bi" refers to two. Therefore, the term binocular means seeing depth with two eyes.

Ans: buildings with lots of corners Expln: The carpentered-world theory states that the Müller-Lyer illusion does not exist in certain "primitive" cultures because they are not surrounded by straight lines and corners.

Ans: a perceptual set Expln: An individual's expectations or perceptual set often influence perception of objects.

Ans: all of the above Expln: All of the answers are correct. Linear perspective is a type of monocular cue that can be used to add depth to pictures; thus, it is also a pictorial depth cue.

the lowest level of stimulation that a person can consciously detect 50 percent of the time the stimulation is present.

as a monocular clue, the brain's use of information about the changing thickness of the lens of the eye in response to looking at objects that are close or far away.

the haziness that surrounds objects that are farther away from the viewer, causing the distance to be perceived as greater

images that occur when a visual sensation persists for a brief time even after the original stimulus is removed.

short tunnel that runs from the pinna to the eardrum.

bundle of axons from the hair cells in the inner ear

cues for perceiving depth based on both eyes

the difference in images between the two eyes, which is greater for objects that are close and smaller for distant objects.

area in the retina where the axons of three layers of retinal cells exit the eye to form the optic nerve

the analysis of the smaller features to build up to a complete perception

the tendency to perceive the apparent brightness of an object as the same even when the light conditions change.

the tendency to complete figures that are incomplete.

snail-shaped structure of the inner ear that is filled with fluid.

visual sensory receptor found at the back of the retina, responsible for color vision and sharpness of vision.

the tendency to perceive two things that happen close together in time as being related.

the tendency to perceive things as simply as possible with a continuous pattern rather than with a complex, broken-up pattern.

the rotation of the two eyes in their sockets to focus on a single object, resulting in greater convergence for closer objects and less convergence if objects are distant.

the recovery of the eye's sensitivity to visual stimuli in darkness after exposure to bright lights.

the ability to perceive the world in three dimensions.

the tendency to perceive objects, or figures, as existing on a background.

theory of pitch that states that pitch is related to the speed of vibrations in the basilar membrane.

the sensation of taste.

tendency of the brain to stop attending to constant, unchanging information.

cycles or waves per second, a measurement of frequency.

the smallest difference between two stimuli that is detectable 50 percent of the time.

sense of the location of body parts in relation to the ground and each other.

the recovery of the eye's sensitivity to visual stimuli in light after exposure to darkness.

the tendency for parallel lines to appear to converge on each other.

cues for perceiving depth based on one eye only.

the perception of motion of objects in which close objects appear to move more quickly than objects farther away.

illusion of line length that is distorted by inward-turning or outward-turning corners on the ends of the lines, causing lines of equal length to appear to be different

the sensation of smell.

areas of the brain located just above the sinus cavity and just below the frontal lobes that receive information from the olfactory receptor cells.

theory of color vision that proposes visual neurons (or groups of neurons) are stimulated by light of one color and inhibited by light of another color.

the assumption that an object that appears to be blocking part of another object is in front of the second object and closer to the viewer.

the method by which the sensations experienced at any given moment are interpreted and organized in some meaningful fashion.

the tendency to perceive things a certain way because previous experiences or expectations influence those perceptions.

the visible part of the ear

psychological experience of sound that corresponds to the frequency of the sound waves; higher frequencies are perceived as higher pitches.

theory of pitch that states that different pitches are experienced by the stimulation of hair cells in different locations on the organ of Corti.

the tendency to perceive objects that are close to each other as part of the same grouping.

perception that occurs when objects that a person expects to be of a certain size appear to be small and are, therefore, assumed to be much farther away.

visual illusions in which the figure and ground can be reversed.

visual sensory receptor found at the back of the retina, responsible for noncolor sensitivity to low levels of light.

the process that occurs when special receptors in the sense organs are activated, allowing various forms of outside stimuli to become neural signals in the brain.

tendency of sensory receptor cells to become less responsive to a stimulus that is unchanging

an explanation of motion sickness in which the information from the eyes conflicts with the information from the vestibular senses, resulting in dizziness, nausea, and other physical discomfort.

the tendency to interpret the shape of an object as being constant, even when its shape changes on the retina.

the tendency to perceive things that look similar to each other as being part of the same group.

the tendency to interpret an object as always being the same actual size, regardless of its distance.

the sensations of touch, pressure, temperature, and pain.

the body senses consisting of the skin senses, the kinesthetic sense, and the vestibular senses

disorder in which the signals from various sensory organs are processed in the wrong cortical areas, resulting in the sense information being interpreted as more than one sensation.

the tendency for textured surfaces to appear to become smaller and finer as distance from the viewer increases.

the use of preexisting knowledge to organize individual features into a unified whole.

the process of converting outside stimuli, such as light, into neural activity.

theory of color vision that proposes three types of cones: red, blue, and green

the sensations of movement, balance, and body position.

the change in the thickness of the lens as the eye focuses on objects that are far away or close.

theory of pitch that states that frequencies about 400 Hz to 4000 Hz cause the hair cells (auditory neurons) to fire in a volley pattern, or taking turns in firing.