S & P Practice Questions

Hearing a sequence of sounds of different pitches is to ________ as recognizing the sound sequence as a familiar melody is to ________.

• the just noticeable difference; accommodation

• absolute threshold; difference threshold

• sensory interaction; feature detection

• feature detection; sensory interaction

• sensation; perception

Heather Sellers suffers from prosopagnosia and is unable to recognize her own face in a mirror. Her difficulty stems from a deficiency in

• top-down processing

• transduction

• kinesthesis

• sensation

• accommodation

Trying to see a hidden representational image in a piece of abstract art by looking carefully at each element in the picture and trying to form an image employs which kind of perceptual process?

• selective attention

• interposition

• perceptual adaptation

• bottom-up processing

• retinal disparity

Because she was listening to the news on the radio, Mrs. Schultz didn't perceive a word her husband was saying. Her experience best illustrates

• gate-control theory

• choice blindness

• gestalt

• selective attention

• opponent-process theory

Standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, Jerry kept looking at his watch to see the time. As a result, he failed to see that a store employee was being robbed by a person just in front of him. Jerry most clearly suffered

• place theory

• inattentional blindness

• sensory interaction

• blind spot

• feature detectors

The local fire department sounds the 12 o'clock whistle. The process by which your ears convert the sound waves from the siren into neural impulses is an example of

• sensory adaptation

• accommodation

• parallel processing

• transduction

• sensory interaction

When informed that a brief imperceptible message would be flashed repeatedly during a popular TV program, many viewers reported feeling strangely hungry or thirsty during the show. Since the imperceptible message had nothing to do with hunger or thirst, viewers' strange reactions best illustrate

• the McGurk Effect

• sensory adaptation

• the volley principle

• a placebo effect

• accommodation

Although Manuel was sitting right next to his parents, he smelled a skunk minutes before they did. Apparently, Manuel has a lower ________ for skunk odor than his parents have.

• accommodation level

• absolute threshold

• tolerance level

• olfactory saturation level

• adaptation level

An exhausted forest ranger may notice the faintest scent of a forest fire, whereas much stronger but less important odors fail to catch her attention. This fact would be of greatest relevance to

• the Young-Helmholtz theory

• opponent-process theory

• signal detection theory

• frequency theory

• place theory

Audiotapes of soothing ocean sounds accompanied by faint and imperceptible verbal messages designed to increase a desire to lose weight best illustrate

• synesthesia

• sensory interaction

• subliminal stimulation

• parallel processing

• difference thresholds