Question 1

A belief in the doctrine of vitalism implied that
A) physiological processes could be fully understood through scientific analysis.
B) physiological processes could not be fully understood through scientific analysis.
C) nervous energy could be increased by vitamins.
D) the law of specific nerve energies was incorrect.

Accepted Answer

The doctrine of vitalism is the belief that there is a vital force or life force that animates living organisms, and that this force cannot be explained by physical or chemical laws alone. Therefore, it implies that physiological processes cannot be fully understood through scientific analysis.

Question 2

The argument that our sense of causality is not absolute but only probabilistic,based on the assumption that event sequences observed in the past are highly likely to be repeated in the future,was proposed by
A) David Hume.
B) Immanuel Kant.
C) Johannes Müller.
D) Hermann Helmholtz.

Accepted Answer

B

Question 3

To Helmholtz,the law of conservation of energy implied all of the following EXCEPT
A) all forms of energy are interchangeable varieties from a single reservoir, which cannot be increased or decreased.
B) causality is probabilistic, not absolute.
C) there could be no perpetual motion machine.
D) vitalist theory seemed to be contrary to other natural laws.

Accepted Answer

The law of conservation of energy does not imply that causality is probabilistic. In fact, it assumes a deterministic cause-and-effect relationship between energy transformations.

Question 4

How did Helmholtz define perception?
A) the physiological process that conveys signals to the brain which results in conscious awareness
B) the process through which the senses detect visual, auditory, and other sensory stimuli and transmit them to the brain
C) the psychological process by which sensory information is actively organized and interpreted by the brain
D) the minimum amount of difference between two senses that is necessary to tell them apart

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz viewed perception as an active process in which the brain actively organizes and interprets sensory information.

Question 5

According to Kant,the __________ world consists of "things in themselves" which exist independently of human experience and reason.
A) material
B) phenomenal
C) noumenal
D) objective

Accepted Answer

Kant referred to the world of "things in themselves" as the noumenal world, which exists independently of human experience and reason. The phenomenal world, on the other hand, is the world as it appears to us through our senses and our cognitive faculties. Therefore, choice C is the correct answer.

Question 6

Helmholtz's early experiments with frogs' and humans' legs indicated that the speed of the nervous impulse was
A) infinite.
B) about the same as that of an electrical current in a wire.
C) slow enough to suggest reaction times of two seconds or more in very large animals.
D) finite but too fast to be measured with existing equipment.

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz's early experiments with frogs' and humans' legs suggested that the speed of the nervous impulse was slow enough to suggest reaction times of two seconds or more in very large animals. This implies that the speed of the nervous impulse was much slower than that of an electrical current in a wire, which rules out option B. Option A, which suggests an infinite speed, is not applicable as no physical entity can travel at infinite speed. Option D is incorrect because the finite speed of nervous impulses was determined later with more advanced equipment.

Question 7

Helmholtz decided to study medicine because
A) his father was a physician and he was encouraged to follow in his footsteps.
B) medicine promised to be a lucrative career.
C) as a non-wealthy student he was eligible for a free medical training program in exchange for service as an army surgeon.
D) following the death of a relative he wanted to find a cure for tuberculosis.

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz was from a non-wealthy family and was eligible for a free medical training program in exchange for service as an army surgeon.

Question 8

A major consequence of the adoption of the doctrine of physiological mechanism by Helmholtz and his fellow students was that they
A) were encouraged to try to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable, such as analyzing and measuring the nervous impulse.
B) were motivated to perform the ultimate experiment, disproving vitalism completely.
C) lost support from their superiors, including Müller, and had extra challenges in pursuing their later careers.
D) were able to develop the law of specific nerve energies.

Accepted Answer

The adoption of the doctrine of physiological mechanism by Helmholtz and his fellow students encouraged them to try to solve problems that previously seemed unsolvable, such as analyzing and measuring the nervous impulse. This led to groundbreaking discoveries in the field of physiology.

Question 9

A notion which David Hume's skeptical philosophy challenged,and which Immanuel Kant tried to rescue in his philosophical reformulation,was
A) specific nerve energies.
B) analytic geometry.
C) the soul.
D) causality.

Accepted Answer

David Hume's skeptical philosophy challenged the notion of causality, which is the idea that events have a cause and effect relationship. Immanuel Kant tried to rescue this idea by arguing that causality is not something we perceive in the world but rather is a necessary condition for our experience of the world.

Question 10

__________ was a university friend of Helmholtz's who later collaborated with him in determining the electrochemical nature of the nervous impulse.
A) Johannes Müller
B) Emil de Bois-Reymond
C) Ernst Brücke
D) Thomas Young

Accepted Answer

Emil de Bois-Reymond was a close associate of Hermann von Helmholtz and they worked together on understanding the electrochemical basis of nerve impulses, marking significant contributions to the field of electrophysiology.

Question 11

Helmholtz divided his discussions of vision and audition into sections devoted to which three of the following general categories?
A) chemical, physiological, and perceptual
B) physical, physiological, and psychological
C) vitalistic, mechanistic, and subjective
D) phenomenal, noumenal, and material

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz divided his discussions of vision and audition into sections devoted to physical, physiological, and psychological categories. These categories correspond to the physical characteristics of stimuli, the physiological processes by which they are detected and transmitted, and the psychological experiences they generate.

Question 12

A photograph providing an image identical to what is recorded by the eye would feature
A) a fully in-focus scene.
B) only ten percent of the total visual field.
C) the center of the scene in shades of grey and the rest in blurred colors.
D) all but the center of the scene as blurred.

Accepted Answer

The human eye naturally focuses on the center of its visual field, with peripheral vision being less sharp and detailed. This means that a photograph mimicking exactly what the eye records would have a sharp center with the rest of the scene appearing blurred, as our peripheral vision does not focus on details or maintain sharpness like the central point of gaze does.

Question 13

When you press gently on the side of your eyeball and experience the visual sensation of colored light,you illustrate
A) the law of specific nerve energies.
B) Weber's Law.
C) the Young-Helmholtz Law.
D) the law of sensory pressure.

Accepted Answer

The law of specific nerve energies explains that different sensory modalities are encoded by different nerve fibers. In this case, pressing on the side of the eyeball activates the nerve fibers in the retina, which are responsible for encoding visual information. The experience of colored light is therefore consistent with the activation of these visual nerve fibers, supporting the law of specific nerve energies. Weber's Law and the law of sensory pressure are not relevant to this phenomenon, and the Young-Helmholtz Law explains how color vision is created from the stimulation of three types of cones in the retina, but it does not apply to this specific example.

Question 14

The idea that all living things are imbued with an ultimately unanalyzable "life force" is the major tenet of what doctrine?
A) mechanism
B) vitalism
C) conservation of energy
D) transcendental idealism

Accepted Answer

The idea of a life force that cannot be reduced to physical or chemical explanations is the central idea of vitalism, making option B the correct answer. Mechanism, on the other hand, holds that all natural phenomena, including life, can be explained through physical and chemical processes. Conservation of energy is a principle of physics that states energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. Transcendental idealism is a philosophical doctrine that concerns the relationship between experience and the unknowable.

Question 15

Within the structure of the eye,the lens brings near objects into focus by bulging in the middle and brings distant objects into focus by assuming a relatively flat shape.This process is known as
A) accommodation.
B) perception.
C) sensation.
D) inference.

Accepted Answer

The process described is called accommodation, which refers to the ability of the lens to adjust its shape in order to focus on objects at different distances.

Question 16

Helmholtz's attempt to measure the speed of the nervous impulse in human subjects
A) gave consistent results almost identical with those for the frog's nerve.
B) helped introduce the "reaction time" method into psychology.
C) indicated that the speed was too fast to be measurable in humans.
D) demonstrated the existence of a nonphysical "life force."

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz's attempt to measure the speed of the nervous impulse in humans involved using the "reaction time" method, which measures the time it takes for a person to respond to a stimulus. This method became an important tool in the field of psychology, allowing researchers to measure the speed of mental processes. While Helmholtz's measurements were not as precise as later experiments, they did provide an estimate of the speed of the nervous impulse in humans.

Question 17

According to Kant,time and space are
A) categories.
B) appearances.
C) causes.
D) intuitions.

Accepted Answer

Kant posits that time and space are forms of intuition, meaning they are the necessary conditions through which we perceive phenomena. They are not derived from experience but are the a priori framework that structures all of our experiences.

Question 18

According to Helmholtz's distinction,the discontinuous patches of colored light you experience when viewing a landscape are your __________,while the "trees," "grass," and "sky," etc.,you become aware of are __________.
A) unconscious inferences; conscious inferences
B) perceptions; sensations
C) sensations; perceptions
D) primary colors; perceptions

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz's distinction is between sensations, the discontinuous patches of colored light, and perceptions, the "trees," "grass," and "sky," etc. Therefore, the best choice is C, where sensations and perceptions are correctly matched with the given descriptions. A is incorrect because it refers to inferences rather than sensory experiences. D is incorrect because primary colors are not directly relevant to Helmholtz's distinction.

Question 19

According to Helmholtz's analysis of the eye,the sharpness of focus within the visual field is
A) impressively acute only in a very small region near the center.
B) about the same quality as that produced by a good camera lens.
C) impressive evidence of the optical perfection of the eye.
D) uniform throughout the entire field.

Accepted Answer

Helmholtz's analysis of the eye determined that the sharpness of focus is impressively acute only in a small area near the center of the visual field. This is due to the high density of receptors in the fovea, the central area of the retina, which allows for greater acuity in that area compared to the surrounding peripheral areas.

Question 20

According to Kant,the objective external world can never be known directly.Instead,we only know the external world as it impacts the human mind.This inner and subjective world is also known as
A) the noumenal world.
B) the phenomenal world.
C) intuitions.
D) appearance.

Accepted Answer

According to Kant, the external world can only be known through our senses and the way our minds perceive it, which he called the phenomenal world. The noumenal world, on the other hand, is the world as it is in itself, independent of our perception, and is unknowable to us. Intuitions and appearances are related to our perception of the world, but do not define the inner and subjective world as the phenomenal world does.

Quiz 5: The Sensing and Perceiving Mind: From Kant through the Gestalt Psychologists

A belief in the doctrine of vitalism implied that

The argument that our sense of causality is not absolute but only probabilistic,based on the assumption that event sequences observed in the past are highly likely to be repeated in the future,was proposed by

To Helmholtz,the law of conservation of energy implied all of the following EXCEPT

How did Helmholtz define perception?

According to Kant,the __________ world consists of "things in themselves" which exist independently of human experience and reason.

Helmholtz's early experiments with frogs' and humans' legs indicated that the speed of the nervous impulse was

Helmholtz decided to study medicine because

A major consequence of the adoption of the doctrine of physiological mechanism by Helmholtz and his fellow students was that they

A notion which David Hume's skeptical philosophy challenged,and which Immanuel Kant tried to rescue in his philosophical reformulation,was

__________ was a university friend of Helmholtz's who later collaborated with him in determining the electrochemical nature of the nervous impulse.

Helmholtz divided his discussions of vision and audition into sections devoted to which three of the following general categories?

A photograph providing an image identical to what is recorded by the eye would feature

When you press gently on the side of your eyeball and experience the visual sensation of colored light,you illustrate

The idea that all living things are imbued with an ultimately unanalyzable "life force" is the major tenet of what doctrine?

Within the structure of the eye,the lens brings near objects into focus by bulging in the middle and brings distant objects into focus by assuming a relatively flat shape.This process is known as

Helmholtz's attempt to measure the speed of the nervous impulse in human subjects

According to Kant,time and space are

According to Helmholtz's distinction,the discontinuous patches of colored light you experience when viewing a landscape are your ,while the "trees," "grass," and "sky," etc.,you become aware of are .

According to Helmholtz's analysis of the eye,the sharpness of focus within the visual field is

According to Kant,the objective external world can never be known directly.Instead,we only know the external world as it impacts the human mind.This inner and subjective world is also known as