AP Psychology Study Guide Ch.

5-6

Chapter 5

• Thresholds
○ Absolute Threshold: minimum stimulations necessary to detect a
particular light, sound, pressure, taste, or odor 50% of the time
○ Difference Threshold: minimum difference a person can detect
between any two stimuli half the time. Increases with the magnitude of
the stimulus.
 Example: add 10 grams to 100 grams- can’t detect the
difference. Add 10 grams to 1 kilogram- can detect the
difference
• Sensory Adaptation: our diminishing sensitivity to an unchanging stimulus.
○ After constant exposure to a stimulus, our nerve cells fire less
frequently.
 Example: getting use to the smell in your house/car
• Subliminal Stimulation
○ We can unconsciously sense subliminal (“below threshold”) stimuli and
without our awareness, these stimuli have extraordinary suggestive
powers. We can still detect some stimuli slightly below our absolute
thresholds.
○ Prime (-ing): The activation, often unconsciously, of certain
associations, thus predisposing one’s perception, memory, or
response. Sometimes we feel what we do not know and cannot
describe.
 Ex.: an experiment subliminally flashed either emotionally
positive (kittens) or negative (dead bodies) scenes an instant
before participants viewed slides of people. The participants
consciously perceived only a flash of light. People who were
flashed a positive scene seemed nicer. The people who were
flashed a negative scene did not.
• Transduction: process by which our sensory systems encode stimulus
energy as neural messages.
○ Ex.: Eyes perceive light energy. They transducer (transform) the
energy into neural messages that the brain then processes into what
you consciously see.
○ Auditory Transduction:
• Eye
○ Structure: Light enters through the cornea which protects the eye
and bends light to provide focus. Light passes through the pupil (small
adjustable opening) which adjusts the light intake by dilating and
constricting in response to light intensity and ever to inner emotions.
The lens, located behind the pupil, focuses the incoming rays into an
 image on the eyes light-sensitive back surface. Does this by changing
its curvature in a process called accommodation.
○ Retina: Has receptor cells: cones and rods.
 Light energy strikes the rods and cones produces chemical
changes that generate neural signals neural signals activate
bipolar cells bipolar cells activate ganglion cells ganglion
cell’s axons converge (rope like structure) to form an optic
nerve that carries information to the brain thalamus receives
and distributes the information.
 Blind Spot: where the optic nerve leaves the eye; no receptor
cells are located there.
 Fovea: The central focal point in the retina, around which the
eye’s cones cluster
○ Young- Helmholtz Trichromatic (3-color) theory: The retina
contains three different color receptors: on most sensitive to red, one
to green, one to blue- which when stimulated in combination can
produce the perception of any color.
○ Opponent-Process theory: theory that opposing retinal processes
(red-green, yellow-blue, white-black) enables color vision. (Explain
after images ; Flag experiment on pg. 213)
○ Colorblind: Lack of functioning red-green sensitive cones, or
sometimes both. Their vision is either monochromatic or dichromatic
instead of trichromatic.
○ Nearsightedness: a condition in which nearby objects are seen more
clearly than distant objects, because distant objects focus in front of
the retina.
 Cause: Misshapen eyeball focuses the light rays from the distant
objects in front of the retina.
○ Farsightedness: a condition in which far away objects are seen more
clearly that near objects because the image of the near object is
focuses behind the retina.
• Hearing
○ Frequency: number of complete wavelengths that pass a point in a
given time.
○ Pitch: tone’s experienced highness or lowness; depends on frequency.
○ Place Theory: in hearing, the theory that links the pitch we hear with
the place where the cochlea’s membrane is stimulated.
○ Frequency Theory: in hearing, the theory that the rate of nerve
impulses traveling up the auditory nerve matched the frequency of a
tone, thus enabling us to sense its pitch.
○ Locating sounds: Sound waves strike one ear sooner and more
intensely than the other our brain computes the sound’s location.
○ Hearing loss:
  Conduction Hearing Loss: hearing loss caused by the damage
to the mechanical system that conducts sounds waves to the
cochlea
 Sensorineural Hearing Loss: Hearing loss caused by the
damage to the cochlea’s receptor cells or to the auditory nerves;
also called nerve deafness.
 Cochlear Implant: a device for converting sounds into
electrical signals and stimulating the auditory nerve through
electrodes threaded into the cochlea.
• Touch:
○ 4 distinct senses when it comes to skin: pressure, warmth, cold, pain
○ Why do we still feel our fingers moving when our eyes are closed?
○ Top-Down Processing: Information processing guided by higher level
mental process, as when we construct perceptions drawing on our
experience and expectations
○ Bottom- Up Processing: analysis that begins with the sensory
receptors and works up to the brains integration of sensory
information.
• Taste:
○ Sensory Interaction: the principle that one sense may influence
another, as when the smell of food influences its taste.
• Smell: if you smell a flower, airborne molecules of its fragrance must reach
receptors at the top of your nose sniffling swirls air up to the receptors,
enhancing the aroma receptor cells send messages to the brain’s olfactory
bulb and then onward to the temporal lobe’s primary smell cortex and to the
parts of the limbic system involved in memory and emotions.
• Pain
○ Gate- Control Theory: the theory that spinal cord contains a
neurological “gate” that blocks pain signals or allows them to pass on
to the brain. The “gate” is opened by the activity of pain signals
traveling up small nerve fibers and is closed by activity in larger fibers
or by information coming from the brain.
○ Phantom-Limb Experiment: pg 226 paragraph 3
○ Phantom Limb Sensation: pg. 227 paragraph 1
Indicate that with pain, as with sights and sounds, the brain can
misinterpret the spontaneous central nervous system activity that
occurs in the absence of normal sensory input. Pain felt in an
amputated or paralyzed limb based on expectation of pain stimulated
by vision or knowledge of an injury.
○ Alleviating Pain:
• Difference between sensation and perception (conceptual)
 Sensation is a process through which we represent the physical
world in our mind by detecting physical energy from the
 environment and encoding it as neural signals. Perception is the
way we select, organize, and interpret sensation.
- Bottom –up vs. Top-down processing!
• Sensation as people get older
 It diminishes

Chapter 6

• Gestalt Psychology: an organized whole, Gestalt Psychologists emphasized

our tendency to integrate pieces of information into meaningful wholes.
• ESP: The controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory
input. (English: We perceive without sensing). It is NOT proven to be
telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognition.
• Moon Illusion: The moon looks 50 percent larger on the horizon than in the
sky.
• What factors influence perception?
○ Biology of sensory systems
○ Previous experiences
○ Cultural expectations
• Depth cues: How do we perceive distance and size?
○ Visual cliff (Infants reluctant to step off cliff)
○ Binocular cues: Depth cues, such as retinal disparity and convergence
that depend on the use of two eyes
○ Depth perception: The ability to see objects in three dimension
although the images that strike the retina are two dimensional; allows
us to judge distance.
• Retinal Disparity: A binocular cue for perceiving depth
○ By comparing images from the two eyeballs, the brain computes
distance—the great the disparity (difference) between the two images,
the closer the object.
• Retinal Convergence: A binocular cue for perceiving depth
○ The extent to which the eyes converge inward when looking at an
object. The great the inward strain, the closer the object.
• Perceptual Constancy: Perceiving objects as unchanging (having constant
lightness, color, shape, and size) even as illumination and retinal images
change.
• Perceptual Set: A mental predisposition to perceive one thing and not
another.
○ Perceiving a parent and child look more alike once told they are
related