Chapter 4

Psychophysics: Basic Concepts and Issues

1. Explain how thresholds are determined and how stimulus intensity is related to absolute thresholds.
 
2. Explain Weber's law, Fechner's law, and the basic thrust of signal detection theory.
 
3. Describe the Featured Study on perception without awareness and discuss the practical implications of subliminal perception.
 
4. Discuss the meaning and significance of sensory adaptation.
 

Our Sense of Sight: The Visual System

5. List the three properties of light and the aspects of visual perception that they influence.
 
6. Describe the role of the lens and pupil in the functioning of the eye.
 
7. Describe the role of the retina in light sensitivity and in visual information processing.
 
8. Describe the routing of signals from the eye to the brain and the brain's role in visual information processing.
 
9. Discuss the trichromatic and opponent process theories of color vision, and the modern reconciliation of these theories.
 
10. Discuss whether perception involves top-down or bottom-up processing.
 
11. Explain the basic premise of Gestalt psychology and describe Gestalt principles of visual perception.
 
12. Explain how form perception can be a matter of formulating perceptual hypotheses.
 
13. Describe the monocular and binocular cues employed in depth perception.
 
14. Describe perceptual constancies in vision and illusions in vision, and discuss their importance.
 

Our Sense of Hearing: The Auditory System

15. List the three properties of sound and the aspects of auditory perception that they influence.
 
16. Summarize information on human hearing capacities and describe how sensory processing occurs in the ear.
 
17. Describe the routing of auditory signals from the ear to the brain and auditory information processing in the brain.
 
18. Compare and contrast the place and frequency theories of pitch perception and discuss the resolution of the debate.
 
19. Discuss the cues employed in auditory localization.
 

Our Chemical Senses: Taste and Smell

20. Describe the stimulus and receptors for taste and discuss factors that may influence perceived flavor.
 
21. Describe the stimulus and receptors for smell and discuss the sensitivity of human olfaction.
 
22. Describe the processes involved in the perception of pressure, temperature, and pain.
 
23. Describe the perceptual experiences mediated by the kinesthetic and vestibular senses.
 
24. Explain how the chapter highlighted three of the text's unifying themes.
 
25. Discuss how the paintings shown in the Application illustrate various principles of visual perception.

Terms
Sensation
Perception
Psychophysics
Threshold
Absolute threshold
Just noticeable difference (JND)
Weber's law
Signal-detection theory
Sensory adaptation
Fechner's law
Lens
Pupil
Retina
Cones
Rods
Fovea
Dark adaptation
Light adaptation
Color blindness
Receptive field of a visual cell
Lateral antagonism
Feature detectors
Subtractive color mixing
Additive color mixing
Trichromatic theory of color vision
Complementary colors
Afterimage
Opponent process theory of color vision
Reversible figure
Perceptual set
Feature analysis
Bottom-up processing
Top-down processing
Optical illusion
Phi phenomenon
Distal stimuli
Proximal stimuli
Perceptual hypothesis
Depth perception
Binocular cues
Monocular cues
Perceptual constancy
Auditory localization
Cochlea
Basilar membrane
Place theory
Frequency theory
Volley principle
Gustatory system
Olfactory system
Impossible figures
Gate-control theory
Kinesthetic sense
Vestibular system
Near-sightedness
Optic chiasm
Subjective contours
Pictorial depth cues
Subliminal perception
Far-sightedness
Key People
Gustav Fechner
Ernst Weber
David Huber & Torsten Wiesel
Hermann von Helmholtz
Max Wertheimer
Anna Treisman
Linda Bartoshuk
Ronald Melzack and Patrick Wall



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