One theme of this chapter is summarized by the last two sentences: “Perception is an active psychological activity. Your perceptions of the world reveal information about the world, and yourself.” What is revealed about individuals who see the Virgin Mary in their potato chips or toast? Why doesn’t everyone see these images? [Analyze]
Piggybacking off of question #1, what are other examples of how our perceptions of ambiguous objects (i.e., objects that can be interpreted in more than one way) reveal information about ourselves? [Comprehend]
Why can’t we tickle ourselves? That is, how can the same stimulus—
Prosopagnosia is a rare disorder in which individuals are unable to recognize faces. Congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis (CIPA) is a rare genetic disorder in which individuals are unable to feel pain. How can an evolutionary perspective help us to understand why these disorders are so rare? [Synthesize]
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You were probably not terribly surprised to learn of the monocular cues we use to perceive distance. For example: We know, based on years of experience, that when we look down the street, the sidewalks appear to converge, and we use this convergence information to perceive how far away a distant object is. Why, then, when asked to draw landscapes for the first time in elementary school, do you suppose children have such difficulty creating the proper perspective? Why must we be taught how to draw what we literally see? [Analyze]
Would you want to be a supertaster? What foods would you be likely to avoid? What might be the health consequences of this avoidance? [Comprehend]
Why do we need greater haptic acuity at the fingers and less at the back? [Analyze]
Are there individual differences in haptic acuity? Use the two-
Now that you understand the normal biology of visual processing, think about what could go wrong at any point in the process. Using what you’ve learned about the individual functions of the following structures, consider how damage to each one might affect vision: cornea, pupil, lens, retina (rods and cones), ganglion cells, optic nerve, optic chiasm, lateral geniculate nucleus, visual cortex. [Analyze]
Now that you understand the normal biology of auditory processing, think about what could go wrong at any point in the process. Using what you’ve learned about the individual functions of the following structures, consider how damage to each one might affect hearing: pinna, eardrum, ossicles, hair cells of the cochlea, auditory nerve, auditory cortex. [Analyze]