Sensation & Perception
Textbook Study Guide
IMPORTANT: This document is intended to guide your study of the textbook only. It does not
completely cover the content included in exams. Exams can include content from the book,
lecture slides, videos shown in class or online lectures, and other content discussed in class or
online lectures.
Module 18: Basic Principles of Sensation and Perception
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What is the difference between sensation and perception?

What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down processes?

What is transduction?

What are the different types of “thresholds” that psychologists study when examining
sensation and perception?

What does it mean if a stimulus is “subliminal?”

What is Weber’s law and how does it pertain to just-noticeable differences?

What is sensory adaption?
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What is perceptual set?
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What are examples in the book about how expectations affect our perceptions?
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What are context effects?
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What are the visual examples shown in the textbook?

How do emotions and motivations affect our perceptions?
Module 19: Vision and Perceptual Organization and Interpretation

What is light? What determines its qualities (e.g., hue, intensity)?

How does the eye take in and transduce light?

What is accommodation?

What causes our “blind spot?”
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What is the fovea of the eye?

What are rods and cones and what do they do?

How does visual information go from the eyes to the brain?
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What allows us to see in color?
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What is trichromatic (Young-Helmholtz) theory? How does it relate to the cone cells
of the eye?

What is opponent-process theory? How does it explain “afterimages?”

What is feature detection and where in the brain does it occur?

What is parallel processing and how is it crucial for vision?
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Don’t worry about studying Perceptual Organization.

How can your brain interpret depth information?

What are the binocular and monocular cues your brain uses to infer depth?
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How do we perceive motion and what perceptual assumptions does it rely on?

What is perceptual constancy and how does it show itself in color, brightness, shape and
size constancy?

What occurs when a blind person has their sight ability restored?

What is perceptual adaptation?
Module 20: The Nonvisual Senses

What is “sound” and what determines its qualities (e.g., loudness, pitch)?

How does the ear amplify and pick up sounds, turning them in to neural signals?

What is the difference between sensorineural hearing loss and conduction hearing loss?
Which is more common?

How does listening to loud noises continuously lead to hearing loss?
 Why do men tend to display greater hearing loss as they get older than women?

What are cochlea implants and how do they repair a person’s ability to hear?

How do we perceive loudness vs. pitch?

What are the two different ways in which the brain differentiates between different
pitches?

How does the brain locate sounds?

Don’t worry about studying touch, taste, or smell.

How do we sense our own body’s position and movement (also known as kinesthesia)?

How is kinesthesia tied with your vestibular system, and where does the vestibular
system get its information about the position of your head?

How do the senses interact to produce a whole experience?

What happens if your individual senses (e.g., eyes and ears, eyes and vestibular
system) disagree with each other?

What is embodied cognition and how do tactile sensations affect our social judgments?