sensation
The process by which we detect physical energy from the environment and encode it as neural signals is...
perception
The process by which sensations are selected, organized, and interpreted is...
bottom-up processing
Sensory analysis, which starts at the entry level and works up, is called...
top-down processing
Perceptual analysis, which works from our experience and expectations, is called...
prosopagnosia
The perceptual disorder in which a person has lost the ability to recognize familiar faces is...
psychophysics
The study of relationships between the physical characteristics of stimuli and our psychological experience of them is...
absolute threshold, 50
The ... refers to the minimum stimulation necessary for a stimulus to be detected ... percent of the time.
signal detection, psychological
The theory of ... led to the concept that absolute thresholds depend not only on the strength of the signal but also on a person's ... state.
subliminal
Some entrepreneurs claim that exposure to "below threshold," or ...., stimuli can be persuasive, but their claims are probably unwarranted.
conscious
Some weak stimuli may trigger in our sensory receptors a response that is processed by the brain, even though the response doesn't cross the threshold into ... awareness.
prime, priming effect, automatically
Under certain conditions, an invisible image or word can ... a person's response to a later question. The ... illustrates that much of our information processing occurs ...
difference threshold, just noticeable difference
The minimum difference required to distinguish two stimuli 50% of the time is called the ..., or the ....
Weber's law, stimulus
The principle that the difference threshold is not a constant amount, but a constant proportion, is known as ... The proportion depends on the ...
sensory adaptation
After constant exposure to an unchanging stimulus, the receptor cells of our senses begin to fire less vigorously; this phenomenon is called ...
informative
Sensory adaptation illustrates that sensation is designed to focus on ... changes in the environment.
neural, transduction
Stimulus energy is converted into ... messages through the process of sensory ...
electromagnetic
The visible spectrum of light is a small portion of the larger spectrum of ... radiation.
wavelength, hue
The distance from one light wave peak to the next is called ....This value determines the wave's color, or ...
intensity, amplitude, brightness
The amount of energy in light waves, or ..., determined by a wave's ...., or heigh, influence the ... of a light.
cornea, pupil, iris
Light enters the eye through the ..., then passes through a size of this opening is controlled by ...
lens, retina
By changing its curvature, the ... can focus the images to focus the image of an object onto the ..., the light-sensitive inner surface for the eye.
distant, in front of, nearby, distant
In nearsightedness, light rays from (nearby/distant) object converge (in front of/in back of) the retina, rather than on it, and (nearby/distant) objects are seen more clearly than (nearby/distant) objects.
accommodation, acuity
The process by which the lens changes shape to focus images is called ... Clarity, or sharpness, of vision is called ...
nearby, in back of, distant, nearby
In farsightedness, light rays from (nearby/distant) objects converge (in front of/in back of) the retina, and (nearby/distant) objects are seen more clearly than (nearby/distant) objects.
cones, rods
The retina's receptor cells are the ... and ...
bipolar, ganglion, optic nerve, brain
The neural signals produced in the rods and cones activate the neighboring ... cells, which then activate a network of ... cells. The axons of ganglion cells converge to form the ..., which carries the visual information to the ...
blind spot
Where this nerve leaves the eye, there are no receptors; thus the are is called the ...
fovea, peripherals, bipolar
Most cones are clustered around the retina's point of central focus, called the ..., whereas the rods are concentrated in more ... regions of the retina. Many cones have their own ... cells to communicate with the visual cortex.
cones, rods
It is the (rods/cones) of the eye that permit the perception of color, whereas (rods/cones) enable black-and-white vision
sensitive, 20
Unlike cones, in dim light the rods are (sensitive/insensitive). Adapting to a darkened room will take the retina approximately ... minutes.
abstract, thalamus, visual cortex, feature detectors
Visual information percolates through progressively more ...levels. In the brain, it is routed by the ... to higher-level brain areas. Hubel and Wiesel discovered that certain neurons in the ... of the brain respond only to specific features of what is vi
temporal, gaze, head angle, posture, body movement, perceives
Feature detectors pass their information to higher-level brain cells in the brain, including an area in the ... cortex, which responds to specific visual scenes. Research has shown that in monkey brains such cells specialize in responding to a specific ..
simultaneously, parallel processing, blindsight
The brain achieves its remarkable speed in visual perception by processing several subdivisions of a stimulus (simultaneously/sequentially). This procedure, called ..., may explain why people who have suffered a stroke may lose just one aspect of vision.
integration, gamma, similar
Once the distributed parts of the brain have processed sensory stimuli, EEG recordings reveal a moment of neural ..., lasting for about a fourth of a second and creating ... waves. Other senses process information with (similar/slower/faster) speed and in
reflects, construction
An object appears to be red in color because it ... the long wavelengths of red and because of our mental ... of the color.
sex-linked
One out of every 50 people is color deficient; this is usually a male because the defect is genetically ...
Young-Helmholtz trichromatic, red, green, blue, additive, subtractive
According to the ... theory, the eyes have three types of color receptors: ..., ..., ... Mixing lights, as Young and von Helmholtz did, is ... color mixing, unlike mixing paints, which is ...
opponent, afterimage
After staring at a green square for a while, you will see the color red, its .. color, as an ...
opponent-process, red, green, yellow, blue, black, white
Hering's theory of color vision is called the ... theory. According to this theory, after visual information leaves the receptors it is analyzed as terms of pairs of opposing colors: ... vs ..., ... vs ...., and ... vs ...
context
The experience of color depends on the ... in which an object is seen.
color constancy
In an unvarying context, a familiar object will be perceived as having consistent color, even as the light changes. This phenomenon is called ...
reflected; surrounding objects
We see color as a result of our brains' computations of the light ... by any object relative to its ...
audition, air molecules
The stimulus for hearing, or ..., is sound waves, created by compression and expansion of ...
loudness
The amplitude of a sound wave determines the sound's ...
frequency
The pitch of a sound is derived from the ... of its wave
decibels; 0
Sound energy is measured in units called ... The absolute threshold for hearing is arbitrarily defined as ... such units.
outer, middle, inner
The ear is divided into three main parts: the ... ear, the ... ear, and the ... ear.
eardrum
The outer ear channels sound waves toward the ..., a tight membrane that then vibrates.
hammer, anvil, stirrup
The middle ear transmits the vibrations through a piston made of three small bones: the ..., ..., and ...
cochlea, oval window, basilar membrane, hair cells, thalamus, temporal, number
In the inner ear, a coiled tube called the ... contains the receptor cells for hearing. The incoming vibrations cause the ... to vibrate the fluid that fills the tube, which cases ripples in the ..., which is line with ... This movement triggers impulses
place; low
One theory of pitch perception proposes that different pitches activate different places on the cochlea's basilar membrane; this is the ... theory. This theory has difficulty account for how we hear ...-pitched sounds, which do not have such localized eff
frequency; high; 1000
A second theory proposes that neural impulses, sent to the brain at the same frequency as the sound wave, allow the perception of different pitches. This is the ... theory. This theory fails to account for the perception of ...-pitched sounds, because ind
volley
For the higher pitches, cells may alternate their firing to match the sound's frequency, according to the ... principle.
speed, loudness
We locate a sound by sensing differences in the ... and ... with which it reaches our ears.
harder
A sound that comes from directly ahead will be (easier/harder) to locate than a sound that comes from off to one side.
parallel processing
As with visual information, the brain uses ... as specialized neural teams work on different auditory tasks simultaneously.
conduction hearing loss
Problems in the mechanical conduction of sound waves through the outer or middle ear may cause ...
aging
Damage to the cochlea's hair cell receptors or their associated auditory nerves can cause ... hearing loss. It may be caused by disease, but more often it results from the biological changes linked with ... and prolonged exposure to earsplitting noise or
stimulate
Scientists have discovered ways to .. hair cell regeneration.
cochlear implant
An electronic device that restores hearing among nerve-deafened people is a ...
deaf culture, chicken, speak, disabilty.
Advocates of ... object to the use of these implants on ... before they have learn to ... The basis for their argument is that deafness is not a ...
is, with, have, seem to
Sign language (is/is not) a complete language, (with/without) its own grammar, syntax, and semantics. Those who learn only sign language during childhood ... (have/do not have) difficulty later learning to read and write. People who lose one channel of se
sensory compensation
People who become deaf, or who lose another channel of sensation, often experience .. in another ability.
sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami
The sense of touch is a mixture of at least four senses: ..., ..., ..., and .... Other skin sensations such as tickle, itch, hot, and wetness, are ... of the basic ones.
top-down, somatosensory cortex
The ... influence on touch is illustrated by the fact that a self-produced tickle produces less activation in the ... than someone else's tickle.
injury; hyperalgesia
People born without the ability to feel pain may be unaware of experiencing severe ... People with illness-related ... experience extreme sensitivity to things others find only mildly painful.
senses; brain; expectations
Pain is a property of the ... as well as of the ... and our ..
phantom lib; tinnitus
A sensation of pain in an amputated leg is referred to as a .... sensation. Another example is ..., experienced by people who have a ringing-in-the-ears sensation.
sensory input
Pain-producing brain activity may be triggered with or without ...
is not, does not
The pain system (is/is not) triggered by one specific type of physical energy. The body (does/does not) have specialized receptor cells for pain.
gate-control, gate, spinal cord, small ,large brown
Melzack and Wall have proposed a theory of pain called the ... theory, which proposes that there is a neurological ... in the ... that blocks pain signals or lets them through. It may be opened by activation of (small/large) nerve fibers and closed by act
social; psyical; Rene Descartes, brain
Individual differences in perceiving pain are an example of ... influences on pain. Such influence demonstrate that pain is not merely a ... phenomenon, as proposed centuries ago by. .. Rather, pain is created by the ...
sweet, sour, salty, bitter, umami
The basic taste sensations are ..., ..., ..., ..., and a meaty taste called ...
chemical; taste buds; pore
Taste, which is a ... sense, is enabled by the 200 or more .. on the top and sides of the tongue. Each contains a ... that catches food chemicals.
week or two, decreases, decreases, smoking, alcohol
Taste receptors reproduce themselves every ... As we age, the number of taste buds (increases/decreases/remains unchanged) and our taste sensitivity (increases/decreases/remains unchanged). Taste is also affected by ... and by ... use
sensory interaction; McGurk, see, hearing
When the sens of smell is blocked, as when we have a cold, foods do not taste the same; this illustrates the principle of .... The ... effect occurs when we ... a speaker saying one syllable while ... another.
olfaction; chemical; cannot
Like taste, smell, or ..., is a ... sense. Unlike light, an odor (can/cannot) be separated into more elemental odors
early adulthood
The ability to identify scent peaks in ... and declines thereafter.
learned
The attractiveness of smells depends on ... associations.
limbics
Odors are able to evoke memories and feelings because there is a direct link between the brain area that gets information from the nose and the ancient ... centers associated with memory and emotion.
kinesthesis; muscles; tendons; joints
The system for sensing the position and movement of body parts is called ... The receptors for this sense are located in the ..., ..., and ... of the body.
vestibular sense; semicircular canals; vestibular sacs
The sense that monitors the position and movement of the head (and thus the body) is the ... The receptors for this sense are located in the ... and ... of the inner ear.