Exam 6: Sensation and Perception

The human nose can detect aromas that the most sophisticated machines fail to detect. Explain what happens once you inhale vapours (airborne chemical molecules) from a rose.

The fact that some perceptual processes appear to be innate doesn't mean that all people perceive the world in the same way. List four psychological factors that can influence what we perceive and how we perceive it.

________ is what makes a note played on a flute, which produces relatively pure tones, sound different from the same note played on an oboe, which produces very complex sounds.

The tendency to perceive what we expect to perceive is called perceptual set.

The amplitude of a sound wave is related to the perceived ________ of a sound.

The ________ is a measure of the smallest amount of energy a person can detect.

The rarest type of colour deficiency occurs when individuals are unable to distinguish yellow from blue.

The process by which the brain organizes and interprets sensory information is called sensation.

In a signal-detection task, the participant tends to be a "yea-sayer." She will have:

The authors of your textbook discuss a case study of a woman (D.F.) who has suffered brain damage to the ventral part of the occipital lobe of her brain, resulting in visual agnosia. She lost the ability to do all of the following EXCEPT:

The Gestalt psychologist's motto was, "The whole equals the sum of its parts."

When you enter a dim room, the ________ widens to let more light in.

Sense receptors are specialized cells that convert physical energy in the environment or in the body into electrical energy that can be transmitted as nerve impulses to the brain.

In sensory deprivation studies, researchers were interested in what would happen if our senses adapted to most incoming stimuli. Explain the findings and the procedural limitations of the early studies in sensory deprivation. What has been revealed by later research? How do think that you would respond if you spent an hour alone in a "floatation tank?"

Explain the concept of sensory crossover. For most of us, the senses remain separate. Describe the rare condition called synesthesia.

If a person was born with eyes that had rods, but no cones, she or he would have:

Most colour deficient people see the world as blue, yellow, brown, and grey.

In addition to a subject's sensory capacity, signal-detection theory takes into account the:

Rods and cones are connected by ________ to bipolar neurons.

Longer light waves tend to be seen as violet and blue.