PSYCH- EXAM 2 Carthage College

What are the active processes involved in perception?

Sensation, perception, and attention are all active processes.

What is perception in relation to the external world?

Perception is a representation of the external world.

How are perceptual representations formed?

They involve a connection between sense organs and the brain.

Give an example system used to study perception.

The sense of smell (olfaction).

How can olfactory function be measured?

Olfactory function can be measured in several ways and is affected by many factors.

Are all sensory systems alike?

They are alike in many ways, but not all ways.

What is the definition of sensation?

Detecting physical energy and encoding neural signals (sensory transduction); bottom-up, data-driven processing.

What is perception?

Selecting, organizing, and interpreting sensations; top-down, cognition-driven processing.

What does "per capio" mean?

To seize that which is thoroughly in front of you

What is attention?

Selecting which sensory input to discard and which to process.

What are the main perceptual systems?

Vision (seeing), Audition (hearing), Somatosensation (touch), Olfaction (smell), Gustation (taste).

Why is olfaction important?

Functions include: ingestion (enjoyment of food), avoiding hazards (spoiled food), social communication (recognizing kin).

What can loss of smell lead to?

Depression, loss of enjoyment of food, and fear of danger.

Subliminal messages vs priming: what did James Vicary claim?

He falsely claimed that subliminal advertising affected behavior.

What did Bargh find about priming?

Priming with words related to aging made people walk more slowly.

What did Holland find about priming with scents?

Exposure to citrus-scented cleaning products made people more likely to think about and engage in cleaning behavior.

Is perception a direct copy of the external world?

Naïve realism says yes ("seeing = believing"), but this is challenged by limits of perception.

Give examples that challenge naïve realism.

Microscope, dog whistle, telescope, visible light spectrum.

How do other species perceive the world differently?

Dogs have keen smell, dolphins use echolocation, eagles have acute vision, star-nose moles can smell underwater.

What does the olfactory system involve?

The nose and related brain structures.

What does the visual system involve?

Eyes and brain processes that interpret visual information.