Deck 1: What Is Perception

Question 1

Which is NOT considered one of the five canonical senses but is, in fact, a human sensory ability?

A)touch
B)proprioception
C)vision
D)lateralization

Answer 1

B

Question 2

Wanda is smelling coffee.The receptor cells in Wanda's nose are ______.

A)converting light waves into an olfactory experience
B)responding to signals produced by the vestibular system
C)transducing the presence of airborne chemicals into a neural signal
D)interrupting the normal sequence of mental operations

Answer 2

C

Question 3

The proprioception system allows us to ______.

A)keep our balance
B)process temperatures
C)monitor body position
D)identify pressure

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Which of the following has little effect in our perception of flavor?

A)taste
B)touch
C)smell
D)balance

Question 5

Transduction is the process of ______.

A)having a visual experience
B)having an auditory experience
C)converting physical energy into a neural signal
D)converting a neural signal into physical energy

Question 6

A marathon runner finishing a race can feel both pain and exhilaration because ______.

A)senses are interpreted in the context in which they are experienced
B)exhaustion causes the body to misinterpret sensory data
C)pain can be either an internal or an external stimulus
D)sense experience is altered by extreme physical exertion

Question 7

Artist Bev Doolittle paints pictures of horses in snow.What do these painting show about human perception?

A)We struggle to identify shapes if we are not told what to see.
B)We use our knowledge to discern camouflaged shapes.
C)Our perception is influenced by our biases, even when we try to be objective.
D)Our ability to differentiate between objects is affected by our vantage point.

Question 8

How many sensory systems do humans have?

A)1-2
B)5-6
C)7-12
D)15-20

Question 9

The signal produced by receptor cells that can then be sent to the brain is known as the ______.

A)perceptual attribute
B)perceptual absolute
C)neural signal
D)transduction signal

Question 10

Humans must choose which stimuli to focus on.Important or interesting stimuli that stand out to us are known as ______ stimuli.

A)attended
B)potential
C)internal
D)favored

Question 11

Carl notices that he has trouble keeping his balance in the dark.He is likely having a problem with his ______ system.

A)vestibular
B)proprioception
C)auditory
D)olfactory

Question 12

Which term describes our subjective experience of perception?

A)action
B)phenomenology
C)reception
D)cognitive penetrations

Question 13

What is physicist Thomas Young (1773-1829) known for?

A)the doctrine of specific nerve energies
B)the discovery of the sensory experience known as motion aftereffect
C)the view that three nerve fibers are responsible for color vision
D)the first acuity test for vision

Question 14

Which statement best explains the role of bias in sensation and perception?

A)Bias makes it difficult to fully trust our senses and perceptions.
B)Bias most clearly affects our sensory experiences.
C)Bias affects how we perceive sensory stimuli.
D)Bias most clearly affects our sensation and perception of sound.

Question 15

Perception means ______.

A)turning sensory input into meaningful conscious experience
B)registering a physical stimulus on our sensory receptors
C)using logic to interpret sensory data
D)converting auditory input into a visual stimulus

Question 16

In the Aristotle illusion, two crossed fingers are touched by a pencil.Participants observe that ______.

A)two points are perceived instead of one
B)the pencil feels larger than it is
C)the two touches cancel each other out
D)the touch is felt only on the bottom finger

Question 17

The registering of a physical stimulus on our sensory receptors is referred to as ______.

A)sensation
B)perception
C)attention
D)registration

Question 18

Bob and Caroline are sitting next to each other while watching a tennis match.What is one reason that they might disagree on a judge's call, based on principles of perception?

A)Because each is cheering for a different player, their perceptions of the match are affected.
B)Because they see the play from very different angles, they interpret it differently.
C)Because vision and emotion are casually linked, their visual experiences of the match are affected.
D)Because watching sports causes different neurons to fire in male and female brains, they experience the event differently.

Question 19

A central goal of our perceptual processes is producing a ______ representation.

A)quick
B)pleasing
C)truthful
D)creative

Question 20

Why are sensation and perception studied by psychologists?

A)to understand how mood disorders arise from deficits in perception
B)because biologists tend to shy away from neuroscience issues
C)to understand how our brains make sense of the world around us
D)because biology has little effect on sensation or perception

Question 21

The doctrine of specific nerve energies argues that activating ______.

A)visual neurons will cause auditory experience
B)auditory neurons can cause only an auditory experience
C)sensory neurons cause loss of action in the opposite hemisphere
D)multiple neurons simultaneously can lead to misperception

Question 22

Damage to area V1 in patient DB's occipital cortex resulted in ______.

A)a condition known as apraxia
B)a condition known as visual agnosia
C)blindness in certain parts of the visual field
D)no behavioral changes

Question 23

The view that perceptions are created using information from our senses and cognitive processes is known as the ______ view.

A)environmental
B)direct perception
C)constructivist
D)gestalt

Question 24

Which sentence states Weber's law?

A)The specific neurons activated determine the particular type of experience.
B)Information from a sensory signal is inadequate to explain the richness of human experience.
C)A just-noticeable difference between two stimuli is related to the magnitude or strength of the stimuli.
D)To perceive a doubling of brightness, the intensity of light must increase 10-fold.

Question 25

What is remarkable about Kanizsa's triangle?

A)The triangle is seen because we perceive edges that are not present.
B)The triangle is physically presented but masked so that it is not seen.
C)The triangle appears to fade in and out when you stare at it.
D)The triangle appears to be in motion even though it is not.

Question 26

The study of the relation of brain damage to changes in behavioral and cognitive function is known as ______.

A)functional neuroscience
B)gestalt psychology
C)psychophysics
D)neuropsychology

Question 27

What did Helmholtz and Hering disagree about?

A)what should be considered perception and what should be considered sensation
B)signal detection theory and just-noticeable differences
C)the nature of color vision and whether perception involves unconscious inferences
D)the doctrine of specific energy and the role of psychophysics in understanding perception

Question 28

Time to collision is ______.

A)the estimate of when an approaching object will contact another
B)the likelihood that a moving object will self-destruct
C)the idea that the further an object is away from you, the closer it appears
D)the idea that when two objects collide, we perceive one as faster than the other

Question 29

The view that perceptual processes take place over time and can be thought of in terms of a software/hardware metaphor is known as the ______.

A)information processing view
B)direct perception view
C)Gibsonian approach
D)provisionist approach

Question 30

You are driving a car.As you prepare to turn, you see a motorcycle coming toward you.The motorcycle is likely to appear farther away than it is because it is ______.

A)smaller than your car
B)facing you directly
C)moving faster than your car
D)moving slower than your car

Question 31

Which statement is TRUE of gestalt psychology?

A)It was first articulated by Gustav Fechner.
B)It rejects the role of nature in human behavior.
C)It stresses the visual perception of edges.
D)It views the human brain as a giant computer.

Question 32

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, is known as ______.

A)the signal detection view
B)the cognitive approach
C)the unconscious inference approach
D)the direct perception view

Question 33

Agnosia is a deficit in ______ due to brain damage.

A)memory
B)perception
C)a balance
D)a sensation

Question 34

Which of the following statements about neuroscience is TRUE?

A)It is interested in the cellular level.
B)It envisions the brain as a giant computer.
C)It focuses on the whole rather than its parts.
D)It is primarily concerned with a single region of the brain.

Question 35

According the size-arrival effect, smaller objects are perceived as ______.

A)moving faster
B)moving slower
C)closer to the viewer
D)farther from the viewer

Question 36

Hubel and Wiesel used single-cell recording to ______.

A)uncover the basic organization of the olfactory system
B)determine the function of individual neurons in mammalian visual cortex
C)determine the rate at which information moves across synapses in the mammalian visual cortex
D)uncover the role of dopamine and other neurotransmitters in perceptual processes

Question 37

Which of the following is the most likely application of sensation and perception research?

A)developing a more efficient car engine
B)inventing a safer self-driving car
C)creating an alternative to gasoline
D)building more fuel-efficient vehicles

Question 38

What happens when we spin Benham's disk?

A)We see colors that are illusory.
B)We see motion-induced auditory illusions.
C)The direction of the spin appears to reverse.
D)Our fingers detect two-point thresholds.

Question 39

You stare at a downward-moving escalator for some time, then look at a black suitcase sitting stationary on the floor.Most likely, the suitcase will appear to be ______.

A)colored
B)moving upward
C)moving downward
D)wobbly

Question 40

Which of the following statements describes the computational approach?

A)It was pioneered by J.J.and Eleanor Gibson.
B)It was informed by early research into artificial intelligence.
C)It emphasizes the role of sensory organs in perception.
D)It rejects the foundations of the information-processing approach.

Question 41

Describe how most contemporary scientists think we should view human senses.Explain why they believe this is an improvement over the previous model.

Question 42

Explain how sensation and perception research could improve self-driving cars.Be sure to give specific examples.

Question 43

Transduction is the process of converting a physical stimulus into an electrochemical signal.

Question 44

The computational approach builds on the information-processing approach.

Question 45

Human beings have only five senses.

Question 46

Listening to music is an example of a simple perceptual process.

Question 47

Perception is the process of creating conscious perceptual experience from sensory input.

Question 48

Explain how bias can influence our perception of images.Give an example.

Question 49

The idea that the brain needs to reconstruct a visual image based on insufficient information is consistent with a constructivist approach.

Question 50

Most scientists believe that vision and hearing should be considered part of the same sensory system.

Question 51

Biologists have little interest in sensation.

Question 52

Compare and contrast the work of Ernst Heinrich Weber and Gustav Fechner.Describe what they have in common, as well as how they are different.

Question 53

Which of the following is an example of cognitive penetration?

A)wanting to listen to a favorite song when you are sad
B)craving ice cream on a hot day
C)having a car accident on an already-bad day
D)thinking flowers look more vibrant when you are happy

Question 54

In order to design safer self-driving cars, it would be most useful for engineers to understand ______.

A)the history of sensation and perception research
B)how human eyes and brains work
C)the systemic biases that human drivers share
D)the relative sizes of different objects

Question 55

Is phenomenology a uniquely human concept? Why or why not?

Question 56

The ecological approach to perception finds fault with experiments that ______.

A)focus on audition because vision is more important
B)use laboratory stimuli that do not correspond to real-world stimuli
C)use neuroimaging technology to study perceptual phenomena
D)focus on physiological rather than psychological processes

Question 57

The placebo effect is an example of ______.

A)aftereffect
B)transduction
C)the size-arrival effect
D)cognitive penetration

Question 58

Cognitive penetration is the view that cognitive and emotional factors influence the phenomenology of perception.

Question 59

A car driver is making a turn.He is likely to think an approaching school bus is farther away than it is.

Question 60

What is prosopagnosia?

A)an acquired deficit in face perception because of brain damage
B)the complete loss of the somatosensory system
C)blindness due to brain damage
D)a condition that develops after extended exposure to fMRI fields