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NYU Intro to Psych Exam 2 Questions and Answers
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NYU Intro to Psych Exam 2
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NYU Intro to Psych Exam 2The Passive Perceiver - answer the view that perception comes from our senses
receiving and recording information passively, much like a video recorder
Empiricism - answer the school of thought that all knowledge is gained from experience
through our senses
John Locke (1600s) - answer a. empiricist philosopher who argued that our minds are
blank slates (tabula rasa)
b. experience will carve what we learn onto our slates
Distal Stimulus - answer the real object in the outside world (e.g., a car); three
dimensional
Proximal Stimulus - answer the retinal image of the distal stimulus (e.g., retinal image of
car); two dimensional
Problem with Distal vs. Proximal Stimuli - answer We want to know about the distal
stimulus, but our perception begins with the stimulus that actually reaches us, the
proximal stimulus
1. George Berkeley - philosopher who pointed out that large objects that are far away
can cast the same-size retinal image size (proximal stimulus) can't tell us the size of the
distal object
2. However, despite this problem, we have no problem distinguishing a real car that we
see in the distance from a toy car that is on a nearby shelf
Solution to Problem with Distal vs. Proximal Stimuli - answerlearning; prior experience
teaches us how to interpret the two-dimensional proximal stimulus, which results in a
linking together, or associations of two or more sensations being created
1. We see the pattern of visual perspective (retinal image) and reach for the object, or
walk toward it - this experience creates an association in the mind between the visual
cues and the movement that e made to reach it; as the experiences are passively
repeated, we learn to associate certain visual cues with the experience of depth.
2. For example, distance cues contained in the retinal image of the car, like visual
perspective (parallel lines converging as they recede into the distance; objects cast
similar images when they are further away from the viewer), help us distinguish, through
prior experience with the world, between a real car and a toy car.
The Active Perceiver - answerthe view that perception is not passive; the perceiver
must categorize and interpret the incoming sensory information
, Nativism - answerthe view that some important aspects of perception and other
cognitive processes are innate
Immanuel Kant (1700s) - answera. Nativist philosopher who argued that the mind
organizes sensory information into certain preexisting categories and that these
categories are not derived from experience but are innate
b. These innate categories (forms of apperception) are what make perception possible;
examples include:
1. Space/spatial relationships (next to, far from)
2. Time/temporal relationships (before, after)
3. Causality
Psychophysics - answergoes beyond the early philosophical ideas to take a scientific
approach to understanding perception; how the objectively, physically defined stimuli we
encounter (the world as it is) is linked to the subjective, psychological world of our
conscious experience (the world that we perceive it to be)
Sensory Thresholds - answerour sensory detection defined in terms of stimulus
intensities
Absolute threshold - answerthe smallest quantity of an input that can be detected
Difference threshold - answerthe smallest change in an input that can be detected; the
amount by which a given stimulus must be increased or decreased so that a person can
perceive a just-noticeable difference (ind)
1. difference thresholds show a consistent property - the depend on proportional
differences, not absolute differences
Just-noticeable difference - answerthe smallest possible difference between two stimuli
that an organism can reliably detect
Weber's law - answerthe observation that the size of the difference threshold is
proportional to the intensity of the standard stimulus; allows us to compare the
sensitivities of different sensory modalities (e.g., vision with hearing)
1. because our senses are measured in different modalities (decibels, mililamberts,
etc.), we must use Weber's fraction, which is, in Weber's law, the fraction given by the
change in stimulus intensity divided by the standard intensity required to produce a just-
noticeable difference
2. the smaller the fraction, the more sensitive the sense modality; our eyes are more
sensitive to detecting differences in brightness (1.6% difference needed to detect
change) than our ears in detecting differences in loudness (10% difference needed to
detect a change)
Fechner's law - answerthe assertion that the strength of a sensation is proportional to
the logarithm of physical stimulus intensity; describes the relationship between the
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