Exam 5: Perception and the Senses

Engaging in an absorbing activity like video-game playing or completing a crossword puzzle can reduce pain intensity by up to 40% because

Phenomena such as change blindness and perceptual set are evidence that perception is

Marijuana probably reduces pain by action on the brain's endorphin circuits, inhibiting the signals at the pain gate.

In addition to retinal disparity, two-dimensional illusions like the Ames effect, Ponzio illusion, and linear perspective are all binocular depth cues.

As the frequency of a sound wave increases we hear it as an increase in

This dimension of energy, which corresponds to our perception of color, is one way to distinguish the visible spectrum of light.

Taste receptors transduce taste signals and send them to the thalamus along

The basic premise of Gestalt psychology is that human beings have a tendency to perceive ____________ of objects and the world.

Plane crashes, car crashes, boating accidents, and mistaken eyewitness testimony in criminal cases all have likely resulted from inattentional blindness.

For a psychophysicist the just noticeable difference (JND) between two sensations is

The Ames room, in which people can appear to be large or small depending upon their position in the room, most exploits this monocular depth cue.

All of the following statements about the retina are true, EXCEPT

This patch of mucus membrane in the nose contains about 20 million olfactory receptors.

Parapsychologists are most interested in ESP and telekinesis, known as

It is in the visual cortex that sensations of touch relayed from the hands and fingers are interpreted as visual images by blind people.

The ________________ is the minimum intensity of a stimulus necessary for it to be detected by a human or non-human animal at least 50% of the time.

The gelatinous mass of small neurons in the outer layer of the spinal column, known as the substantia gelatinosa is key to this theory of pain perception.

Gate-control theory describes the action of neurons that inhibit transmission of pain signals from the spinal cord to the brain. The signals are called

According to the trichromatic theory of color vision, colors are mixed in three opposing pairs: blue or yellow, red or green, and black or white, by specialized cells in the retina and thalamus.

Not only must a sound be within our sensory range to hear it, it must also reach this for our sensory receptors to register it.