PSYC 375 COMPLETE PRACTICE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

PSYC 375 COMPLETE PRACTICE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Sensation - CORRECT ANSWER-The ability to detect a stimulus and, perhaps, to turn that detection into a private experience. perception - CORRECT ANSWER-the act of giving meaning to a detected sensation qualia - CORRECT ANSWER-In philosophy, private conscious experiences of sensation or perception. dualism - CORRECT ANSWER-the idea that the mind has an existence separate from the material world of the body materialism - CORRECT ANSWER-The idea that the only thing that exists is matter, and that all things, including the mind and consciousness, are the results of interaction between bits of matter. panpsychism - CORRECT ANSWER-The idea that the mind exists as a property of all matter—that is, that all matter has consciousness. psychophysics - CORRECT ANSWER-the science of defining quantitative relationships between physical and psychological (subjective) events two-point touch threshold - CORRECT ANSWER-The minimum distance at which two stimuli (e.g., two simultaneous touches) are just perceptible as separate. just noticeable difference - CORRECT ANSWER-the smallest detectable difference between two stimuli difference threshold - CORRECT ANSWER-the minimum change in a stimulus that enables it to be correctly judged Weber fraction - CORRECT ANSWER-the constant of proportionality in Weber's law Weber's Law - CORRECT ANSWER-the principle describing the relationship between stimulus and resulting sensation that says the JND is a constant fraction of the comparison stimulus Fechner's Law - CORRECT ANSWER-A principle describing the relationship between stimulus and resulting sensation that says the magnitude of subjective sensation increases proportionally to the logarithm of the stimulus intensity. absolute threshold - CORRECT ANSWER-the minimum amount of stimulation necessary for a person to detect a stimulus 50% of the time method of constant stimuli - CORRECT ANSWER-A psychophysical method in which many stimuli, ranging from rarely to almost always perceivable (or rarely to almost always perceivably different from a reference stimulus), are presented one at a time. Participants respond to each presentation: "yes/no," "same/different," and so on. method of limits - CORRECT ANSWER-A psychophysical method in which the particular dimension of a stimulus, or the difference between two stimuli, is varied incrementally until the participant responds differently. method of adjustment - CORRECT ANSWER-a method of limits in which the subject controls the change in the stimulus magnitude estimation - CORRECT ANSWER-a psychophysical method in which the participant assigns values according to perceived magnitudes of the stimuli Steven's Power Law - CORRECT ANSWER-a principle describing the relationship between stimulus and resulting sensation that says the magnitude of subjective sensation is proportional to the stimulus magnitude raised to an exponent cross-modality matching - CORRECT ANSWER-the ability to match the intensities of sensations that come from different sensory modalities supertaster - CORRECT ANSWER-Supertasters are those individuals who experience the most intense taste sensations; for some stimuli, they are dramatically more intense than for medium tasters or nontasters. Supertasters also tend to experience more intense oral burn and oral touch sensations. A variety of factors may contribute to this heightened perception, among the most important is the density of fungiform papillae. signal detection theory - CORRECT ANSWER-A psychophysical theory that quantifies the response of an observer to the presentation of a signal in the presence of noise criterion - CORRECT ANSWER-in signal detection theory, an internal threshold that is set by the observer